Google’s “Racist” Doodle Gets The Conan Treatment

If you’ve been to the Google homepage in the last two weeks, you have probably noticed a flurry of new Google Doodles – a new one each day, actually. Google has committed themselves to pro...
Google’s “Racist” Doodle Gets The Conan Treatment
Written by Josh Wolford
  • If you’ve been to the Google homepage in the last two weeks, you have probably noticed a flurry of new Google Doodles – a new one each day, actually. Google has committed themselves to providing us with a new Olympic-themed Doodle every day during the games, and for that, we salute them.

    The last three days, the Doodles have been interactive – in fact, they’ve all been playable games. On Tuesday, the Doodle let you compete as an Olympic hurdler. Yesterday, it let you shoot hoops in honor of Olympic basketball. And today, Google debuted their toughest game so far, one that involved slalom canoeing.

    But it was the first Doodle, the hurdling one, that sparked a bit of controversy on the interwebs. The game (which you can see above) drew claims of subtle racism from people on social media who said that the black athlete was running on a surface that too closely resembled a watermelon.

    Whether or not you believe that this was an intentional joke, a coincidence that was blown out of proportion, or an example of an eager public waiting to jump on anything (no matter how far-fetched), there’s no denying that Google could have been a lot more racist with their Doodle.

    And Conan goes there…

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