care more about token diversity than actual diversity

Token Black
from "South Park"
(voiced by Adrien Beard, who was recruited
by "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker
"because he was the only black guy we had in our building at the time")

Diversity has been all the rage in American institutions and workplaces for decades now, but many still fail to achieve it. The white people in such places often know they're supposed to be members of a less homogeneous workforce, or campus population, or cast of characters, so they sometimes find ways to create the appearance of diversity. This is much easier than finding ways to achieve actual diversity, which many white people don't really want anyway.

For a lot of white people, appearing diverse is more important than actually being diverse.

Such people can sometimes be heard repeating this mantra of the modern age: "Thank God for photoshop!"

Workers for the city of Toronto recently needed a photo for their city's "Summer Fun Guide," and they apparently wanted to represent their, ahem . . . "fair" city as a diverse place (okay that "fair" isn't fair -- Toronto is actually a very diverse place).

So, instead of finding some real diversity and taking a picture of it, they altered the following image:


Here's the final image that these folks working for the city of Toronto felt satisfied with. Did Token from "South Park" finally grow up, and find work as a diversity model?


Unfortunately, these civic-minded city workers got caught with their diversity down. Allison Hanes of Toronto's National Post even wrote a story about it, which says in part:

The smiling, ethnically diverse family featured on the cover of Toronto's latest edition of its summer Fun Guide was digitally altered to make the photo more "inclusive," which city officials say is in keeping with a policy to reflect diversity.

A spokesman for the department that publishes the guide listing recreation activities confirmed the publication was doctored to insert the face of a different father.

"He superimposed the African-Canadian person onto the family cluster in the original photo. It was two photographs and one head was superimposed over the original family photo," said John Gosgnach, communications director for the social development division.

"The goal was to depict the diversity of Toronto and its residents."

When asked about the altered photo, Kevin Sack, Toronto's director of strategic communications, said, "You won't find a more inclusive organization than us. We want everyone to feel involved and welcome to participate in everything. That's the only goal. Nothing wrong with that."

Right on, Mr. Sack! In these Politically Correct Times, very little is more important than appearing to embrace diversity. As every good director of strategic communications knows, that's much more important than demonstrating actual diversity.

This is pretty clumsy photoshopping, which should inspire a new term -- "photochop." (Oh, wait, that already is a new term. Or maybe an old one -- it's hard to keep up with the Urban Dictionary.)

This photographic insertion of a Token Black Guy -- and it always seems to be a black guy -- in the interests of appearing diverse is nothing new.

In September of 2000, the University of Wisconsin got caught trying to portray its campus as "diverse" with this brochure cover -- can you spot the awkward black guy?

for larger image, click here

As Professor Hany Farid writes at a site advertising his image-tampering detective service,

The original photograph of white fans was taken in 1993. The additional black student, senior Diallo Shabazz, was taken in 1994. University officials said that they spent the summer looking for pictures that would show the school's diversity -- but had no luck.

Which is no surprise, since like most "flagship" state universities, the University of Wisconsin is still struggling -- or supposedly struggling -- to make its student diversity somewhere near that of the state's overall population.

In their bumbling clumsiness, these attempts to keep up appearances might seem like something out of The Onion. Indeed, the writers at that venerable fount of shark-toothed satire seem to have been inspired by the U of Wisconsin's snafu when they wrote a faux exposé, "Black Guy Photoshopped In," accompanied by this image:



Interesting choice for this exquisitely bad photochop -- Iowa State. Iowa is a notoriously white state, but to its credit, many white folks there are anxious about that (after all, their selection of Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries really got his campaign ball rolling).

Are Iowans anxious enough to resort to photochop, in order to appear diverse? Well no, perhaps not -- that's an Onion parody.

The Onion article that accompanies this purposely awkward photo is priceless; it captures the face-saving hypocrisy of university, city, and other diversity-minded officials very well.

Here's part of it -- have you encountered other instances where white folks seem more concerned with the appearance of diversity than with actual diversity?

"Here at Iowa State, we have a remarkably diverse student body, with literally dozens of non-whites," Iowa State director of student affairs Andrea Driessen said. "We thought a picture with at least one non-white happily interacting with whites would be a great way to show off this fact. Unfortunately, we didn't have any pictures of whites and non-whites actually interacting, so we had to make one up."

Said chancellor Dr. Michael Arbus: "An unaltered, or 'real,' cover photo would not have adequately captured the glorious rainbow of multiculturalism that is ISU. We thought it best to take a more illusory, 'less-actual' approach in depicting this school's racial demographic."

The black guy, added using Adobe Photoshop, has been identified as Marcus Jamison. A Shreveport, LA, native, Jamison attended Iowa State for one semester in 1996 before transferring to Grambling University. His face was lifted from a photo of him attending a racial-sensitivity seminar during his freshman orientation and digitally added to the course-catalog cover by graphic designer Brian Tompkins.

"Believe me, this was not an easy task. We combed through hundreds of school-newspaper and yearbook file photos before we found a picture of a black guy," Tompkins said. "Even then, we had to keep searching, because we felt it was important that the black guy be smiling."

Added Tompkins: "If you think it's hard to find a picture of a black guy, try finding a smiling black guy!"


As many white folks know, diversity isn't just a buzzword -- it's important.

In fact, it's almost as important as appearing to have diversity.


Have you encountered this phenomenon, in terms of photos, or other ways of keeping up diverse appearances? Please describe for us in a comment any encounters you've had with these sorts of face-saving white folks.


UPDATE (9/2/09): For more on this, and especially on Diallo Shabazz, the awkwardly posed black guy used and abused by the University of Wisconsin, see Lisa's post at Sociological Images, where she writes in part,

Diallo sued. He didn’t ask for a settlement. He said that he wanted a “budgetary apology.” He asked that, in compensation, the University put aside money for actual recruitment of minority students. He won. Ten million dollars was earmarked for diversity initiatives across the UW system. The irony in the whole thing is that UW requested photos of Shabazz shaking administrators’ hands in reconciliation (i.e., photographic proof that everything was just fine). Oh, and also, the Governor vetoed part of the earmark and many initiatives wore off with turnover.