Well, thank goodness the nasty, warped, and ignorant mindset with which racism colors (no pun intended) an individual's perception of social phenomena in a multi-racial society has finally been eradicated. After 391 years since the first slave ship arrived on the shores of the British colonies in 1618, americans have finally removed this dark stain from their country's history. I suppose it's time to remove all evidence from the amended US Constitution about slaves being counted as 3/5s of a person to insure that the Southern aristocracy would have added influence in the US House of Representatives 219 years ago. And while history is being revised so it will reflect the post-racial society in the usa now, all evidence of states' anti-miscegenation laws could be deleted since there's no point in taking up digital memory or warehouse space with all of that obsolete data. And the quaint classification used by the usa census in 1890 to identify mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons simply adds needless complexity to such a distinguished national history. Some people may want to keep on record Louisiana's highly sophisticated system of racial classification, in which distinctions were made among griffs (offspring of black and mulatto) and sang-meles (a person with one sixty-fourth black ancestry), as well as many other fascinating nomenclatures, since that kind of knowledge can provide content for many hours of humorous conversation at a wine and cheese party on Mercer Island or in Mountain View. But with the President being an African-American man (or mulatto, if we want to be precise), then it's obvious to the world that racism has finally been defeated in the usa. My African American friends here in Tokyo are all making plans to return to the usa as soon as possible. Many have sent their resumes to Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Google, and HP. They are expecting positive results regarding future employment opportunities since they have significant experience at Japanese IT companies and hold advanced degrees. Others who have been working in advertising at ADK and Hakuhodo are sending their resumes to the usa offices of Ogilvy & Mather, BBDO, McCann-Erickson, and Leo Burnett Worldwide. They too expect that their resumes will be eagerly received and a deluge of job offers will be sent to them. I'm sure they are right. After all, the ad in question is a local Polish matter, right? It doesn't have anything to do with racism. The Poles never had a system of plantation slavery using Africans as slave labor. So, maybe a Hasidic Jew should have been used in the middle photo of that ad. After all, the Poles do have a well-documented history of racism. But they have eradicated that stain from their history just as the usa has done with its African American population (you may interpret this clause as you wish), then it would be an attractive message to those progressive Poles who are proud that they don't suffer from the same racist attitudes that previous generations had. It's so wonderful living in a non-racist world. But one thing bothers me. I searched for 2 hours in an attempt to find the name of the ad agency that handled this account for Microsoft and it was not mentioned in the hundreds of posts and news articles I scanned (quickly looked through, a human technique for rapidly finding specific information). Nothing. No names, human or otherwise. While microsoft is of course guilty, the agency employees must have been complicit. Sure, in these tough times they wouldn't say, "We don't your contract if you want us to replace the black man with a white man because Poles can't identify with a black person. Besides, Poles know that all people of African heritage use Apple products anyway." But we are never told who the actual 'deciders' (sic) were in this anomalous incident occurring in a vector of the ad and IT worlds. We just read about Microsoft, a giant reification that is so large that it 'does' things just like human beings do, but its power and wealth are so great that it can withstand a blunder by its units of production as well as the units of production from a contracted service agency. This is what I really like. No accountability. It's OK to trash Microsoft because they are invincible. Just ask the EU's Competition Commission or the DOJ Anti-Trust Division. If Microsoft can prevail over the two highest authorities that have jurisdiction over their corporate practices, then it's safe to trash them. Trashing microsoft is one of my favorite hobbies as well. But microsoft is nothing but a name. It is incapable of planning an ad, hiring an agency, having meetings with the creatives, or buying ad space. People do that. But the only name I saw was that of a microsoft employee whose official title is Chef D'Affaire de Mea Culpa, or at least that's what my friend in Paris calls that position. It sounds about right to me. So, the guilty are protected, whether their sins are incompetence, racism, poor judgment, or just plain stupidity. I think I'll go back to the Sahara Desert and hang out with my Tuareg friends some more. At least if someone screws up, consequences are paid. It seems so much more human to live that way.
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