I’m not shocked that an American agency darkened the skin of French students for their school photo.
I’m just shocked that an American agency needed to darken the skin of French students for their school photo.
Isn’t France like 97% colored at this point?
Where are the remaining 3% of actual French people hiding?
A clumsy attempt to show diversity among its students has ended in disaster for a French art school, which resorted to ‘blacking up’ teenagers in an advertisement to attract American pupils.
Ah, an art school.
Of course.
The Emile Cohl School in Lyon was accused of ‘blackwashing’ a photo after some white pupils in the original group picture were digitally modified to appear with darker skin, and black people were inserted in the shot.
The offensive ‘before and after’ images caused an uproar on social media, with people slating the art school for ‘discrimination and racism’ on Twitter.
Emile Cohl, a privately-owned institution, intends on expanding to Los Angeles by opening a new branch in America within the next four years, reports Rue89Lyon.
To help it drum up interest in enrolling, it started a promotional campaign via a new website for future American students.
The school forwarded the original group photo – snapped by a pupil – to an unnamed communications agency based in California, which then edited the picture before it was published on the website.
Ah, based in California.
Of course.
Sharp-eyed French pupils, however, quickly spotted the differences – four students have had their skin blackened, and two young black women have been integrated in the photo – and uploaded both images to Twitter.
It’s amusing that the agency thought they could get away with this manipulation. Art students tend to be vain and self-absorbed; there’s basically a 99% chance that they’re going to want to see their photos after they’ve been processed.
And there’s a 100% chance they’re going to notice if they’ve been transformed into niggers.
Perhaps the agency counted on the likelihood that the students would just keep their mouths shut about it, since merely hinting that colorfulness is bad or unwanted is a massive no-no in liberal circles. Or maybe the agency knew that their modifications would cause problems but didn’t care, because an art school in Los Angeles literally needs to appeal to 56%-ers to remain in business.
Either way, the story made me chuckle in a restrained and gentlemanly manner.