So… it’s finally happened.
The airborne contagion of racism, which normally passes from white person to white person, has started to possess inanimate objects too.
And the end results would make a Klansman blush.
A video that shows an automatic bathroom soap dispenser failing to detect the hand of a dark-skinned man has gone viral and raised questions about racism in technology, as well as the lack of diversity in the industry that creates it.
The now-viral video was uploaded to Twitter on Wednesday by Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Facebook’s head of platform partnerships in the Middle east and Africa.
He tweeted: ‘If you have ever had a problem grasping the importance of diversity in tech and its impact on society, watch this video.’
The video begins with a white man waving his hand under the dispenser and instantly getting soap on his first try.
Then, a darker skinned man waves his hand under the dispenser in various directions for over ten seconds, with soap never being released.
It’s unclear if this is Afigbo himself.
To demonstrate that skin color is the reason, he then waves a white paper towel under the dispenser and is instantly granted soap.
The tweet has been shared more than 93,000 time, and the video has more than 1.86 million views.
The tweet also spurred over 1,800 comments, many of which are citing this as just another example of lack of diversity in tech.
The decline of society summarized in one photo.
Make no mistake about it, people: this was a conscious act of racism.
The soap dispenser (which, you might have noticed by now, is white) saw this Congoid gentleman enter the bathroom and seized the opportunity to make him wish he’d never been born.
Mission: successful.
The most worrying part about this story, though, is the trend that it represents.
If we allow soap dispensers to start terrorizing Blacks because of the color of their skin, what happens next?
Internet browsers changing colored people’s homepages to Stormfront to make them feel bad?
Ovens incinerating their Jewish owners after telling them to look for the $5 trapped inside?
Kettles refusing to heat the water of Pakistanis in the UK because “they’re not English enough” for tea?
This could be a total disaster.
Thankfully, the Jews have made it their moral duty to stamp out racism wherever it rears its ugly head. They’ve had some success in shutting down the Internet, yes, but this story proves that that’s not enough.
They need to start shutting down household appliances.