1987

QUESTION FORTY ONE: A senior systems executive is making an important presentation to several hundred colleagues and peers at the IBM Headquarters. Senior management is also present. The subject of the presentation is of extreme importance and may dictate a major company policy shift in the near future, with the chance of drastically improving company turnover. On the seventh slide the executive presses the switch to advance to the next frame and finds the enormous projection screen is entirely filled with the following words:

IBM HATES NIGGERS

Any attempt to advance or retreat from this slide has no effect.

1. Describe in detail the feelings of the executive four seconds after this slide is shown on the screen.
2. Imagine that you are a member of the audience seated in the third to rear row of the auditorium. You have harboured racist opinions for a number of years but have declined to express them for fear that it would harm your career prospects. Describe your feelings after seeing this slide.
3. Give an account of the approximate percentage of male members of the audience who have entirely missed the slide because they are scanning the others in the audience in the hope of finding women they would like to fuck.
4. Describe in detail the feelings of the executive nineteen seconds after this slide is shown on the screen. Construct a sentence containing only one verb that, if uttered by the executive, would help to soothe the situation enough to distract at least half the audience from the slide’s content without making the situation appreciably worse.
5. Give explicit reasons why you assumed that question two relates to a Caucasian person harbouring pro-white feelings. Use of the words ‘society’ or ‘paradigm’ will result in a forfeit of at least four marks.

(30 marks)