The Missing Black Polish Businessman

Internet commentators are aflutter over Microsoft's Polish entity's editing of an ad. The original ad, in English, shows three businesspeople at a meeting, in the now-standard American assortment of ethnicity and gender.

Original US ad

The Polish version displays a somewhat sloppy Photoshop job (the center guy became white only from the neck up).

Polish ad

Microsoft has taken down the altered image and issued an apology. Sloppy quality control and the evocation of horrid race relations aside, I frankly don't see a problem with a company altering its advertising image to reflect the society to whom it advertises.

Poland's population ethnically is over 96% Polish, and after that the most common ethnicities are Silesian, German, Belarusian, and Ukranian (source: 2002 census via wikipedia). In other words, there are a lot of fair-skinned people in Poland--orange tans notwithstanding. In my year working in an international company there, I never encountered a meeting which even remotely looked like US Microsoft photo. Diversity is important, but reflecting some semblance of reality is also key. I'm actually surprised they didn't find a more Polish-looking man for the altered photo.