Diversity, Toronto Style

Another case of cut-and-paste diversity. The city of Toronto wanted to feature a racially diverse assortment of people on the cover of its summer Fun Guide. Unable to find a photo that met that criteria, it created one via photoshop. The original is on the left, the altered cover on the right. (That's a really bad photoshop job.) The alteration was noticed by a graphics editor at the National Post.



The most famous case of cut-and-paste diversity was the cover of the 2001-2002 University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate application, mailed out to 50,000 prospective students, in which they inserted the head of a black guy into an all-white crowd scene. There was also the recent case of the asian guy photoshopped into the Homecoming Scotland poster.

Photos

Posted on Thu Jun 11, 2009


Comments

I think it's a little creepy. And is it me or does it seem that the new face is positioned to look down the woman's shirt? That would certainly explain the smile.
Posted by KDP  on  Fri Jun 12, 2009  at  09:44 AM
The photoshopped picture cracks me up. It looks like the new guy just muscled himself into the picture. The next frame would have the wife and kids screaming in fear at the weirdo that just intruded into their lives.
Posted by Joe  on  Fri Jun 12, 2009  at  12:23 PM
Why can't these people just go out and take a photo of some mixed group of people? You'd think that would be easier, unless there really are no other races in town. . .
Posted by Accipiter  on  Fri Jun 12, 2009  at  12:57 PM
We have a lot of racial diveristy here. Sometimes white people seem like the minority. It's extremly stupid that they photoshopped a black guy in but, hey, that's my city. 😉
Posted by Emma  on  Fri Jun 12, 2009  at  10:06 PM
Anyone else notice that the black guy must have freakishly long arms, since his hand is just in on the left side of the shot?
Posted by Smerk  on  Sun Jun 14, 2009  at  02:00 AM
Emma-- Yeah, that's the point. Black people (or people of any other race) aren't exactly scarce in Toronto, so if the city wants a cover photo of an interracial group, why not just hire a few models, instead of sawing off a guy's head from a stock photo and sticking it on another body?
The U-Wisconsin fakery was more understandable from that point of view, since although non-white students do exist at UW-Madison, they are fairly rare there (I visited that campus several times back when my brother was working there). Except for Scandinavia, Madison is the only place I've ever ridden a city bus where all the passengers and the driver were blond, white people.

Smerk-- You're right! The new guy seems to have an incredibly long arm, with two or three elbows! The photoshoppers must have swapped the woman's hand in the original for the (new) man's hand in the "improved" version.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Tue Jun 16, 2009  at  08:17 AM
So what we have, from all the comments, is a Black, lecherous guy with 4 foot long, triple-jointed arms and the nerve to just barge into photos?
Posted by Renquist  on  Mon Jun 22, 2009  at  09:50 AM
It gets worse - In England, the BBC has been required by law to have more ethnically diverse casts in its productions.

So, though there *were* people of African descent in England as early as 1200AD/CE ( Mostly in London ), you see them for example in Nottingham in the 1100's and even in Camelot in the 900s.

God bless America, too sensible to cast an African-American female as Abraham Licoln ofr something equally as ludicrous for political reasosn . . . Wait.
Posted by D F Stuckey  on  Thu Jul 09, 2009  at  06:01 AM
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