Cameras Think Asians Are Always Blinking

By Daniel Dominguez on January 23rd, 2010

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Nikon’s Coolpix S630 digital camera has run into a peck of trouble in Asian markets. Apparently the camera has a hard time distinguishing Asian eyes from blinking and won’t take pictures. Nikon is working to resolve the issue, and most people attribute it to a lack of troubleshooting on the part of Nikon, but this isn’t the first time a seemingly innocuous Nikon product has done something that could potentially be perceived as racist. In fact, their company has a long, storied tradition of releasing products that worked fine for white consumers, but had features that worked less well, or even negatively affected minority consumers, here are just a few:

1.

Buses that only have backseats.

In 1963, in direct response to Rosa Park’s defiance of white authority in the deep south, Nikon came out with a series of buses for sale in the south that only had backseats. Nikon swore that the buses were intended to appeal to the “cool kid” market and not the “racist” market, but the fact that they only sold them in the south, and only during the most heated days of the civil rights movement calls that explanation into question.

2.

Printers that refused to print pictures of Filipinos.

By all accounts the T190 model Nikon color printer worked great on pretty much any printing job. It printed clear, crisp pictures in bright full color. Even photographs were printed with exceptional clarity, unless the photograph had a Filipino person in it, then the printer would just print an empty Filipino person shaped space with the word “Gross!” in it, in italics. Nikon said it was a glitch, but Filipino consumers remain skeptical.

3.

MP3 Players that emit Smallpox.

Nikon released the “Cadmium”, it was their answer to the Ipod. Users, however, generally stayed away from the product, due to its clunky user interface, lack of storage capability, and the fact that whenever you tried to play an MP3 by a Native American artist it would released a large cloud of airborne Smallpox. Nikon claimed that they had meant to include a “Shuffle” feature but had accidentally included clouds of smallpox instead, but consumer groups continue to argue that that is at best, unlikely.