IBM Forced to Apologize After Using Racist Ethnic Terms

Information technology company International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has come under fire and was chastised, by online job applicants, after a slew of people were prompted to select their ethnicity from a list of racist slurs. 

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Among the racially-charged labels were the terms "yellow," "mulatto" and "colored." Several applicants resorted to expressing their displeasure on social media. "I was appalled to be asked on an IBM internship application to choose my ethnic group, and be given the choice of ‘yellow,’” said Alex Gao, a computer science student at New York University.

Gao also pointed out that no other application used this sort of language in their applications.  “I was really surprised, especially to see this coming from IBM, which I generally view as a top technology company.”

He was not the only applicant to post clips of the drop-down menu selections on social media. Rich Park tagged IBM in his post, after which the company's Twitter account faulted the blunder on an automatic translator. The justification automatically raised eyebrows, since IBM develops language translating software. 

Vice president of corporate communications Ed Barbini claimed the information was transferred from Brazil and South Africa recruiting sites, and that the offensive language used came from their local government classifications.

According to Pew Global Research, "mulatto" is used in some pockets of South America, but it is not common. "Colored" was abolished as a legal classifier in South Africa at the same time as apartheid.

The menus also include the options "Not a Brazil National" and "Not a South African National" despite the position being based in the United States.

Barbini claims that the websites' solicitation for job applicants' ethnicity was a temporary and inappropriate error.

"Those questions were removed immediately when we became aware of the issue and we apologize. We do not use race or ethnicity in the hiring process and any responses we received to those questions will be deleted." 

This backlash for racial insensitivity comes shortly after IBM released new software intended to remove inherent racial or sexist bias within organizations and announced the appointment of Admiral Michelle Howard, the first African American woman U.S. Navy Commander, to the company board.