Is Microsoft Racist?

Microsoft was forced to apologize last Wednesday after word of an editing choice of an online ad leaked to the public. Apparently, the head of a black model was “photo-swapped” with the head of a white model.

The ad drew widespread criticism on the Internet after Engadget, an influential tech blog, published news of the gaffe Tuesday.

The ad showed three business people, one Asian, one white and one black. It was altered on Microsoft’s web site in Poland, presumably with the “racially homogeneous” Polish market in mind.

On an amusing note that could put this all into perspective, upon closer inspection, it seems that the middle person is using an Apple MacBook MB062LL/A.

“While saying that Microsoft’s Polish operation was not commenting at all on the issue, Gazeta Wyborcza made much of the suggestion that the laptop in the shot may actually be a barely anonymized Apple model and that the monitor on the table doesn’t seem to be connected to anything. The paper even quoted Vijay, a commenter from the PhotoshopDisasters blog, who wrote: ‘The white head and black hand actually symbolise (sic) interracial harmony.’”

The article goes on to say that the Poles seem to be regarding this as a non-issue,
probably because they don’t have many blacks there. However, the more racially sensitive America will no doubt see this as an attack.

“Apart from the racial undertones it is surprising because the black man looks quite charming while the white guy looks like one of those cheesy, sycophantic employees who laughs the loudest at the bosses jokes, then gets slaughtered at the Christmas party and tries to shag his secretary” an Australian blog says.

On Microsoft’s official page on the social network site Twitter, a posting calls the swap “a marketing mistake” and offers “sincere apologies.”

“We apologized, fixed the error and we are looking into how it happened,” said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman. He said that because the company was still reviewing how the swap occurred he could not comment further.

So is this a racial slam, a “marketing mistake,” or just an editing job gone awry? My money is on the latter ones.

c. 2009