CNN Is Bravely On the Front Lines, Fighting the Racism of (Squints at Story) White Robots

(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

I take back everything bad thing I ever said about CNN. They truly are a gift that we’ve all taken for granted and I hope they continue to pump out quality coverage of the news stories that really matter, like the racism of white robots.

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Earlier on Thursday, CNN tweeted out a gem of a story about how research now suggests that white robots are popular because of racism.

“Have you ever noticed the popularity of white robots? The reason for these shades of technological white may be racism, according to new research,” tweeted CNN.

It only gets better when you read CNN’s article:

“Robots And Racism,” a study conducted by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) and published by the country’s University of Canterbury, suggests people perceive physically human-like robotsto have a race and therefore apply racial stereotypes to white and black robots.
These colors have been found to trigger social cues that determine how humans react to and behave toward other people and also, apparently, robots.
“The bias against black robots is a result of bias against African-Americans,” lead researcher Christoph Bartneck explained to The Next Web. He told CNN, “It is amazing to see how people who had no prior interaction with robots show racial bias towards them.”
The researchers think this is an issue that needs to be addressed. “If robots are supposed to function as teachers, friends, or carers, for instance, then it will be a serious problem if all of these roles are only ever occupied by robots that are racialized as White,”according to the study.
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According to them, they know it’s racism because in a video simulation where you were told to shoot armed robots, unarmed black robots were shot more often. Also, there aren’t a lot of robots with black colors on their exterior.

That’s it. That’s enough to prove that people are racist towards black robots. Robots that aren’t even human yet have black coloring on them. Nevermind that it may have been more difficult to identify an object in the hand due to the darker coloring. It’s just racist.

To make this kind of generalization is ridiculous for multiple reasons. For one, if a video was released of a black robot being kicked around during balance and recovery tests, you’d get no shortage of outcry from the social justice left. Moreover, we see white robots being made around the world from America to Japan, many of them white. Are the Asians making robots white supremacists too?

There’s nothing at all wrong with white coloring, and racism has nothing to do with choosing it. It would be racist if they said something along the lines of “we’ll never make a black robot because we don’t like black people,” but seeing as how they’ve never been said — and I sincerely doubt they feel that way — no racism here is present.

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It seems more likely that we need a refresher on what the word “racism” actually is.

With that said, I see people prefer the black versions of technology all the time. When Xbox released its black version of the 360, my friends all ditched their white ones for it. Most of the technology bought by the populace is black, be it televisions, speakers, or even microphones. Most gaming systems are black or darker colors.

This is an asinine article from CNN. I’d say it bugs me that there are teams of people in a newsroom looking over articles like this and deciding that this is the hard-hitting news that matters, but honestly, I think this kind of panic over lack of societal wokeness is hysterical.

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