Whether you are here because you searched for “happy white woman” or you misspelt it as “happy whit woman”, it is true that images of black women mix up in the search results when you Google-search for either of those phrases. Conversely, when you search for “happy black women”, only images of black women display. But let’s see why this happens.
Just like you, I also stumbled across this controversy on the internet. Why do we see images of mixed-race couples when we search for “happy white women” on Google instead of results showing only happy white women? One begins to wonder if Google classifies white women as black.
Out of curiosity, I decided to search for the contrasting keywords, “happy black women” to see the results I will see. I noticed that all the images displayed in Google image search contained only black women, no mixtures, or inter-racial couples as seen when “happy white women” was Googled. See images below.
Happy white women images
Happy black woman images
Also, you noticed something different when they searched for similar keywords on the Bing search engine. On searching for “happy white women”, Bing search seems to beautifully display a mosaic of only happy white women; and a breath-taking palette of happy black women when the search phrase, “happy black women” was typed.
Bing search for happy white women
Bing search for happy black women
So, why does Google’s search show unexpected results for happy white women?
Reasons For Unexpected Google Results For “Happy White Women”
This question, “How come black people show up when I Google ‘happy white women’?” was asked on Quora some time ago, and it was welcomed by several responses. One Quora user named Tom Thomson replied as follows;
“Google has a strong anti-White agenda. People try to claim it is just the “algorithm.” An algorithm is not pure artificial intelligence. It is basically just a crawler, and humans with their own agenda input what to look for. Most search engines are actually powered by Bing (such as DuckDuckGo), which does not have this strong anti-White agenda.”
Here is the screenshot of Tom’s reply;
Tom also added that;
“They are trying to push an agenda. They hate White people. It’s OK to be White”.
But I could not fully agree with the answers provided above. First, I examined the search results displayed by Google for the phrase, “happy white women”. I discovered that the images displayed by Google were somewhat promoting inter-racial unity. There was even an image of an inter-racial couple holding a cardboard with the bold inscription, “Stop racism” (shown below).
It, therefore, means Google might not be racist in its search algorithm.
Furthermore, I found that this question had some answers on Google Websearch Forum about why Google search results on the keywords, “happy white women” displayed black women alongside. Here are some actual reasons provided by Google Forum Experts:
- Google algorithm may have interpreted the word “white” to mean the background color, and not the person’s color; but interpreted the word “black” to mean the person’s color.
- Many of the search results images are from stock photo sites, and these categorize their content using themes (including sex, color, background color, etc). This might affect the actual search results if images are tagged wrongly. For example, the search term “happy” may have been used in several images of white and black women.
- Google indexes the wording of websites as they appear. That means Google search results may mirror the societal prejudices that feature in many popular websites, as they are used in real life. Hence, the algorithm might misuse the search phrase because the automated algorithms also encounter phrases expressing societal prejudices and tries to display results that abate the effects.
Google Algorithm and Racism
Optimists like me have tried to find out why Googling “happy white women” displayed results that caused the racial reactions seen on the internet. One would begin to question if the Google results were deliberate, or if it is a programming bug in the more recent Google search algorithms.
Over time, the Google search algorithm has evolved to be able to fine-tune search results to the most relevant and appropriate data. This brought about the new concept of “search intent”, where Google tries to analyze the intent or intention behind what keywords are typed before showing the appropriate results.
In this light, we could infer that the Google algorithm may have erroneously perceived the phrase “happy white women” to have a racial intent. It could also mean that that phrase may have been used in several web publications in a racial manner, making Google identify it with racism. All global brands fiercely speak against racism, and other acts related to women and child abuse, as well as political violence; and you’d expect Google to do their bid to curb racism too, especially if it perceives, even though erroneously, that “happy white women” may be racist.
Final words
The trend that the phrase “happy white women” have created on the internet could not have been a thing in the first place if racism was not a thing. You searched for “happy white women”, saw results of happy white women and some black women in the Americas, and then moved on without thinking anything. That’s how it could have been but racism makes us focus on every little detail of anything anyone does.
I have probably given thorough disambiguation to why Google displays unexpected results on searching for “happy white women”. But I also need to add that we all need to embrace the culture of peace and racial unity. It is both unfair and wicked to judge someone simply by the color of their skin in a way that socially, physically or emotionally affects them.
Hopefully, Google resolves the anomaly in the subsequent updates but if that doesn’t happen, just take a chill pill. We are one human population only in different geography, terrains and climes on the same planet.
