Markets

White People Removed from Big Oil Climate Change Ad

By Jim Edwards

Updated on: February 22, 2010 / 2:48 PM EST / MoneyWatch

The American Petroleum Institute appears to have used PhotoShop to replace two white men with an Asian man and a black man in a leaflet opposing climate change legislation -- a classic racial advertising goof (images below). The leaflet purports to show a group of workers whose jobs could be lost if Congress passes legislation to curtail global warming. It reads:

The climate legislation under consideration in Washington is nothing more than a giant tax bill that could kill more than 2 million net jobs nationwide, even after accounting for the creation of green jobs, according to multiple studies.

But Think Progress noticed that these are not, in fact, workers whose jobs are dependent on oil. Rather, they're a bunch of random models in a photo for sale on iStockPhoto.com, titled:

Group of happy business people standing together against white background.

That background was white indeed. All the men in the original picture are white. Although there are four non-white women in the pic, that apparently wasn't enough non-Caucasian skin for API, which changed two of the white men into ethnic minorities:

Why would API do this? Because racial images in advertising are carefully scrutinized, and advertisers who do not show a diverse range of racial faces in their ads are often accused of racism. My BNET colleague Kirsten Korosec points out that the photo has been making the rounds in the oil and energy business since December. It emerged on PhotoShop Disasters this month, where commenters have noticed that in the original image the white guy is the same guy reproduced twice!