Microsoft Apologizes for Changing Race in Photo

Whatever happened to that bastion of liberality, affirmative action, tolerance, and a customer-friendly business?

Somewhere just under the surface, you KNEW a place such as Microsoft was this way. After all, Microsoft got to where it is because of merit, not “diversity”.

The only thing bad about this is the photoshopped head is about 2/3 the size of what it should be.

Isn’t part of the rationalization for diversity is that customers want to see people who look like them? Guess what? Poles aren’t black. So big deal.

Fire the guy who did this for his technical incompetence - not for offending blacks who have know business telling companies how to market themselves in white countries.

Besides, you don’t hear whites complaining about Microsoft overrepresenting minorities in photographs such as these.

Odd. Usually big business tries to do exactly the opposite—to show diversity in its advertisements where none exists rather than to try to conceal it. I wonder if the black man was deemed to be too old looking? In which case, it’s actually a case of “ageism” rather than “racism,” so that’s OK.

The White man’s head doesn’t belong on the Black man’s body, but the Black man doesn’t really belong in the picture at all. Will Microsoft apologize to Americans for the dishonest premise of the original photo?

The only thing that Microsoft did wrong was to take the lazy way out by doctoring the photo, rather than reshooting the image with a different model.

And even the doctoring doesn’t bother me particularly for one reason: THESE ARE NOT REAL PEOPLE. Sure, the models were real, but the piece is using them as generic characters to represent a larger whole, in this case a customer base.

Pegging models to create an image of diversity happens all the time. The only difference is that it’s usually the minority that is overrepresented.

I think the “original” is also altered, because the black guy’s head is too big for the suit.

Usually, these alterations are done to insert blacks in to create a sense of diversity. There was the Toronto travel mag here on AR a few months ago, and several years ago, a black man was inserted into a University of Wisconsin booklet.

Why does Microsoft have to “apologize”???? They can market their products however they choose.

Have we come to such a level of insanity that we now have to “apologize” for putting white people in advertisements? This is so insane!!!

It appears (Microsoft) is proactively addressing discrimination lawsuits before they happen: successful businesses are often targeted by the NAACP and other organizations who seek to shake down big corporations with frivolous lawsuits, unfortunately this is the price of doing business in the United States, and one of the main reasons we are faltering as a nation.

I am a white male.

I do not see myself in these pictures.

Who is the minority?

The race hustlers will demand shakedown moolah. And the fact that Bill Gates has donated more charity $ (over $100 million) to blacks than anyone in history will not matter one iota.

What’s the big deal? Adds in predominately Black areas have more Blacks, like wise with Latinos. That what all marketing people do. So they put a Polish looking guy in a Polish add who cares? Companies just want their adds to blend into the local culture so the message of “buy my product” is viewer friendly. Microsoft owes no one apologies for being targeted by race baiters.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Had the photo been of one Asian and two whites and distributed here in the US, blacks would have complained that they aren’t appealing to the black demographic.

Well, there aren’t exactly many blacks in Poland, so Microsoft was appealing to THAT demographic: white people.

I have to say that the chop job is horrible, though. They used the same hand!

First, the joke: In Poland, white men have black hands - and a case of scoliosis for the medical journals.

Now, for the proselytizing: How DARE Polish businesses desire and (attempt (ineptly) to create) a photo representing employees that look like theirs?

Don’t they realize that the most effective way to sell software and related services in the U.S. is to portray meetings containing entirely Inuit?

Morons!

Advertising is aimed at your desired audience. Why would an Asian be in a Polish web site picture? Or a black? Why didn’t they photograph some Polish people? This is a non issue. Make up is advertised for women - I don’t care that they don’t show men. The Gap is for young people, should I be angry they don’t show us middle aged folks? I should be offended that Microsoft doesn’t show white men. But then they do actively discriminate against white men in employment practices. And Bill and Mil Gates do have a scholarship fund that mentions every ethnic group BUT whites, Bill Gates is rotten and anti-America.

Yes, let the groveling begin! replace the white man back with a black man, are start replacing more Polish whites, with more Black Africans.

At least Mircrosoft acknowledges that blacks are not worshiped in other countries like they are here.

Changing a photo to x-out whites is good, and nearly a legal requirement modern advertising. Changing a photo to replace a person of color is bad. An international scandal.

Maybe it was a white guy with a very deep sun-tan on his hands : )

If you travel to most websites these days you’ll see a multicultural rainbow, usually with Whites - and especially White men either absent from the photo altogether or in the background someplace. White women are usually positioned near a Tall Black man. It’s everywhere and the controlled media, the Z media, is stepping up the pace of multiculturalism.

I was watching a Shania Twain video on youtube recently and there must have been thousands of people in the audience yet the camera kept moving to one particular Black guy near 2 White women. FOUR times the camera showed this one particular Black with White women when there was literally thousands of other people that could have been shown. When you see enough of these things you begin to understand what the media is doing. During the song the camera also displayed 2 White males who appeared to be together and gave the impression of not being very manly. The subliminal message is

White girls - Go and date Blacks
White men - no masculinity

As a matter of fact here’s the link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVAk_mZMDFU

Why should they apologize? To who? All those black-Poles? For what? They can market their product however they want to.

They didn’t change the race. They changed the face.

Some people are so obsessed with their racial hatred that they spend their waking moments looking for ways to convict Whites.

Microsoft was founded by two white guys and now Microsoft apologizes for having a white guy in the photo. How absurd.

Response to post 19 about Shania Twain video:

Good grief! That is pathetic and hilarious at the same time. Not only do they try to imply the two females on his left are with him they pan the camera for a different shot to make it look like the one female on his right is also with him!! The BBC is trying to create the impression that this black goofball is there with three attractive white women. Simply pathetic. The kicker is you can tell by their lack of interaction, expressions and body distance they are NOT there together.

Since this is Shania Twain, I would not doubt at all that this black guy is the ONLY black in the audience and he was brought up front by producers specifically to be put on camera. OR, even more likely, he is an employee of the BBC crew putting on the show and was given a black headband and told to get in front of the camera between the white girls and pretend he was enjoying the show.

This scenario sounds absurd but NOTHING can be put past the media when they are contriving diversity. My wife’s friend was in media and I know for a fact they will rearrange audience members to get blacks on camera.

Someone above mentioned it. Now that I look at it, the black guy’s head looks fake, too. It appears too large for the rest of the body but is less obvious than the tiny head on the new picture. Wish there was a larger high resolution picture.

It don’t get no sillier than this… MS pandering to the minoritie. I mean, we all believe implicitly, Blacks are simply genius level people in general. That have to mentor and guide us Whites. Never mind that if there were any TRUTH to the racial equality myth, all races would have progressed at roughly the same rate. But as history shows us, the Industrial Revolution DID NOT start in the Congo or in Asia. It started in 19th Century WHITE EUROPE (England).

It looks like the stock picture was originally altered to ADD the black guy and the Polish ad is the original shot.
Grobbbbbbbb

This nonsense is so similar to those utterly ridiculous sit-com type commercials aired on TV. The Blacks are always portrayed as affable, super intelligent people… JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE, RIGHT? Yeah. If you believe the Blackss depicted on TV are like mainstream American Blacks, I’ll sell you a great used car. Owned by a lady in Pasadena who only drove it Sundays to church.

You have to laugh and wonder what goes through the minds of advertisers. I mean seriously, just WHOM are the advertisers trying to fool? More importantly, WHY?

Well, we can figure that we’re living in Orwell’s 1984 if “the original” looks like this one.

By the way - Microsoft is clever - they know Poland is not ready yet and first needs some more diversity propaganda – but please from institutions who are federally financed.

According to Marxists race is a social construct, so we aren’t supposed to notice things like that anyway. Shame on Microsoft for being anti-Marxist!

A few years ago, about 1995, Ford (I think) got into a similar row. An advert aimed at the British market featured mainly White people with a couple of non-Whites as well. The same photo was altered for the Polish market, so that all the people featured were White. Are people so thin-skinned nowadays that something as trivial as this upsets them?

Bobby:

You are so right about ‘Nam protests. I used to believe the sucker bait that anti-war street theater was huge, until an amateur historian I know who lived during that time told me the truth — the large protests were only media illusions, and the (relatively) few that did protest were egged on by Marxist college professors who wanted an American defeat in ‘Nam to give the Soviet Union moral energy.

Civilized Neighbor wrote at 11:48 AM on August 27:

Response to post 19 about Shania Twain video:

Good grief! That is pathetic and hilarious at the same time. Not only do they try to imply the two females on his left are with him they pan the camera for a different shot to make it look like the one female on his right is also with him!! The BBC is trying to create the impression that this black goofball is there with three attractive white women. Simply pathetic. The kicker is you can tell by their lack of interaction, expressions and body distance they are NOT there together.

Since this is Shania Twain, I would not doubt at all that this black guy is the ONLY black in the audience and he was brought up front by producers specifically to be put on camera. OR, even more likely, he is an employee of the BBC crew putting on the show and was given a black headband and told to get in front of the camera between the white girls and pretend he was enjoying the show.

This scenario sounds absurd but NOTHING can be put past the media when they are contriving diversity. My wife’s friend was in media and I know for a fact they will rearrange audience members to get blacks on camera.

—— Quite right ‘Civilized Neighbor’. Incredibly this is just one example. There are thousands upon thousands more like this. In past times before I became ‘Awakened’ as my pseudonym implies I noticed all this stuff, but I never realized when I was younger that all of this was actually part of someones or some groups’ agenda. I do now however. There is definitely an agenda by the z media to get White girls to have sex with non-White males. It’s all part of their plan.

There’s a photograph of Trotsky standing at the side of Lenin giving a speech. A later updated version of the picture shows Trotsky totally erased. That was, of course, after Stalin made him a non-person.

Now, with so much of what we do videoed, or at least the assumption that we may have been videoed(hidden cameras?), the feeling has begun to hang over us that we better count on being videoed.

What we see is Rodney King being beaten by the Cops, not the actions that provoked him. How can we experience it as real if we don’t see it over and over again on television. The choice of reality can be selective and manipulated.

And it’s a step from that to have the feeling that if there’s no tape or photo(doctored or not), for all practical purposes, it didn’t happen. Appearance become reality. Isn’t everything important caught on camera?

That’s how the elite have pulled the racial coup in the modern World in the last hundred years, by exploiting the power of technology to confuse appearance and reality.

It’s just marketing people. You know like when Microsoft was accused of passing on siding with humans in China in favor of the PRC allowing the PRC access to all of their operating systems sold in China via a back door and Microsoft’s continuing efforts to help Chinese censors remove “freedom” and “democracy” from the net in China with a software package that prevents bloggers from using these and other politically sensitive words on their websites.

But then their tight relationship with the NSA coul be construed as indicating our government already has that ability as well.

Hey, it’s just marketing people and another reason to like linux.

To Patrick 2:

Did you happen to see the “report” put out by MSNBC with Contessa Brewer about the people with firearms being openly carried when Obama was in Arizona? Brewer cautioned how white “racists” were carrying “assault weapons” and so constituted a threat to Obama. Their cameras showed an AR-15 rifle being carried around the shoulder of one individual. All the while, Brewer is whabbling on and on about white “racism”.

Turns out, the AR-15 was being carried by a Bantu, who said he was there to exercise his Second Amendment rights. But MSNBC wanted you to think whitey was carrying that gun. MSNBC did this, by showing a close-up of the gun, but never the person, so one would think it was a Caucasian carrying that gun.

Gunowners really called MSNBC onto the carpet for that one.