[Imc-newsroom] brochure image altered for UI's MLK week

[Barry Isralewitz]

[re-send, all attachements now removed to fit 40K message limit]

Hello UCIMC Newsroom,

  A bit of local media, somewhat funny and definitely sad:

  Many in the C-U area will likely attend, this January 22, the keynote
presentation for UIUC's Martin Luther King Celebration Week; the speaker
will be Aaron McGruder, author of popular comic strip "The Boondocks".
Later in the week from the keynote speech, as part of the same event
series, is a diversity training class. The class brochure has a photograph of a
group of racially diverse people, but the only black man in the photograph has
been Photoshopped in!

  The manipulation is a pretty crude job, you can actually see the before and
after versions, overlaid on each other, when viewing the original online .pdf
version.  Adobe Acrobat Reader displays the photograph to have originally been
a picture of a black man standing alone, then overlays this with the same man,
but with a group of people (containing no black man), digitally placed over
him.  Yes, they are differently lit.

  Original version:

http://www.admin.uiuc.edu/mlk/calendar/DIVERSITYwkshop.pdf

  Revealed version (I used Acrobat to move the before and
after pictures apart):

      DIVERSITYwkshop_revealed.pdf  [attached to earlier mail]

  A screenshot of the before and after pictures:

      before_after.jpg   [attached to earlier mail]

   The brochure ("Diversity and Racism in the Classroom") even has phrases
like: "how does an institution ensure that there is not a mismatch between its
culture and its mission?".  Wow. With a diversity brochure that has to to
manufacture racial harmony in the clip art, one gets a pretty good idea of
where to start.


  The calendar of events that lists the talk, the diversity class, and the
link to the brochure .pdf, is at

http://www.admin.uiuc.edu/mlk/calendar/calendar.html


  I don't want to ruin people's sincere efforts for the MLK celebration week,
but the brochure photo really is disturbing.  If you run the story, please try
and contact the relevant diversity-effort-related campus organizations to get
their viewpoints and, if possible, to find out how the brochure came to be.

			     Cheers,

                             Barry Isralewitz

--
Barry Isralewitz   Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group
Beckman 3121   (217) 244-1612     Home phone: (217) 337-6364
email: isralewi at uiuc.edu     http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~barryi