HOMEPODCAST
SUBMIT STORY

I was hired to illustrate a cartoon design for a tee shirt. It was supposed to be 2 large "ants" having a picnic, with tiny cartoon people running around the picnic basket and blanket.

Simple enough. Two colors, red and black on a grey tee. I did most of the cartoon lines in black, and used red as a fill color on the checkerboard blanket and the two ants who were having the picnic.

When I showed the client, they didn't like it.

Client: It looks racist to me. Those ants are stereotypes of African Americans.

I wasn't sure why or how. They were red cartoon ants after all. 

Me: Oh, I'm sorry. I don't really see it but I can change them if you don't' like them. 

The changes she wanted me to add? Large cartoon lips and a big hair bow to the girl ant, and a gold chain and baseball hat to the boy ant in solid black ink. 

For added WTF, the client was an African American woman. I'm still scratching my head on this one. 

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Early in my career (circa 2008), I was hired by a major retailer to work in their internal human resource department. I joined the company at the same time as several other new hires working across the chain. We were greeted by someone whose title was “Chief Intern.”

Client: The best way to get along is if you treat this like 8 Mile. I am Eminem and you are all my n****rs!

I quit after two days... and I wasn't the first.

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I’m a video editor, working on a corporate video for a client.

Client: This looks great, but can you remove the b-roll at [timecodes]?

Me: Ok, do we have a preference on what to replace it with?

Client: Anything’s fine, just make sure there isn’t any footage of anyone of ethnicity.

Me: Well, you know everyone has an ethnicity. 

Client: Right, but don’t show any blacks.

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While working on an e-commerce site design:

Client: All of my models are white, so I hired some colored girls to model my clothes.

Me: Uh…

Client: I don’t want anyone to think I am racist.

Me: Yeah. I am sure this will fix that for sure.

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I just finished a meeting with an older client. As I’m leaving, he says:

Client: Ni hao!

I blinked while he looked pleased with himself. After I got over my surprise:

Me: Ni hao means “hello,” not goodbye. Also I’m not Chinese.

He didn’t respond. 

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A client hired me to film two events for her bluegrass society. When I finished the rough cut, she decided the videos weren’t “diverse enough” (they were bluegrass concerts, after all). 

Her solution? She had me film her talking to, and hugging, some black people to cut into the video. 

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I was making an advertisement that featured children playing in the snow. The client used a horrible stock image account and finding a lot of pictures to choose from was almost impossible but I managed to find a good one of two little kids making an igloo.

The kids just happened to be Asian.

Client: Can you find a picture of kids that aren’t ethnic? 

She actually forced me to find a picture of white kids instead. I actually felt sick to my stomach.

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Me: You want your main character on the cover, okay. What does she look like? I need to find a model that matches.

Client: She’s a person of color.

I appreciate the sensitivity, but I might need a bit more information than that.

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I worked as a designer for an advertising company that mostly dealt with small businesses, a lot of which were in small towns in rural areas. When designing an ad that needed stock photos of people, I always tried to include multicultural images. Most clients thought that was great.

Most.

Client: What’s with these images? We’re not in Toronto! Please use images of CANADIAN patients!

I was speechless.  I just sent back an ad with the whitest people possible and didn’t work with him again.

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