Outrage Over "Nigger Brown" Couch

Quote:

TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her Toronto home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.

The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out "nigger brown" on the tag.

"My daughter saw the label and she knew the color brown, but didn't know what the other word meant. She asked, 'Mommy, what color is that?' I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I never thought that's how she'd learn of that word," Moore said.

The mother complained to the furniture store, which blamed the supplier, who pointed to a computer problem as the source of the derogatory label

Kingsoft Corp., a Chinese software company, acknowledged its translation program was at fault and said it was a regrettable error.

"I know this is a very bad word," Huang Luoyi, a product manager for the Beijing-based company's translation software, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

He explained that when the Chinese characters for "dark brown" are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive description comes up.

"We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We've been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn't follow suit," he said.

Moore, who is black, said Kingsoft's acknowledgment of a mistake does not make her feel better.

"They should know what they are typing, even if it is a software error," she said. "In order for something to come into the country, don't they read it first? Doesn't the manufacturer? The supplier?"

Romesh Vanaik, owner of Vanaik Furniture, where Moore bought the sofa, said it has been a best seller. He said he checked his stock but found no other couch with the offensive label.

"It's amazing. I've been here since 1972 and I never knew the meaning of this word," said Vanaik, a native of India.
read the rest at CNN.

What a crazy coincidence: a black family buys the only brown couch labeled "nigger brown" by a Chinese factory using old Chinese-to-English translations.

The world is a crazy place.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Arainach

I've never got why people get so offended over a fucking WORD anyway. You don't see the Jews bitching every time I say "holocaust".

But what if a Jewish family bought an ash gray couch labeled "holocaust ash"?
Oh shit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Reading through this thread I'm reminded of what I did when I was in 3rd grade:

We were doing some Black History Month coloring activity with crayons and what not. Anyway, I had Martin Luther King Jr. to color in. At the time I was thinking "Hmmm, he's black, sooooo...." and I grabbed a BLACK CRAYON and colored MLK Jr. PITCH BLACK. You could not see shit on his face, he looked like a shadow. I showed my teacher when I was done and she laughed off and on for the rest of the day about it. I had no idea what I did wrong, so I just left it at that. It was only after I looked at my classmates' pictures and saw that everyone colored their black guy/girl nigger-brown that I realized what I did wrong.
And that, my friends, is why Black History Month should be renamed to Nigger-Brown Month.

The end.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.