INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

N-Word Search On Google Maps Leads To The White House, Fuels Racism Outrage

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 20:40 PST, May 19, 2015

At the time of writing, if you search using a racist term on Google Maps, you will be instantly led to the White House, home of President Barack Obama. Yes, one of America’s most revered buildings comes up as the sole result of an n-word search.

Using the terms “n****r house” in the search box on maps.google.com gives only one result. The White House. This could change in the very near future as Google tries to remove this rather racist result from their search system, but the “proof of the pudding,” so to speak, is included in a couple of screen grabs below.

Please note the racist n-word search has been edited to contain **** instead of the actual characters, but you can see where this is going.

whitehouse3

According to CBS Local, what Google terms to be a “glitch” in the system was apparently found accidentally and a Twitter user, Bomani X, contacted the Huffington Post to let them know a Howard University alumni group had tipped him off to the situation.

While Google might call it a “glitch,” it seems it was also found by another Twitter user, Give peace a chance, who also had the same result, but this time using a different spelling in the n-word search, i.e. n***a.

In the case of an n-word search with either spelling, a red pin is instantly displayed directly on the White House.

n-word search

It is thought that the error might be related to a previous policy of Google that allowed the public to manually add locations to its map software, which apparently is causing a few problems.

In the meantime, Mirror Online reports that Google made a media statement to the effect that they are working on the problem.

“Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly.”

However despite this, Twitter users are venting their disappointment and shock on the n-word search subject.

The whole n-word search incident comes up just as President Barack Obama decides to get his own Twitter account after six years in the White House. The Inquisitr reports that the president will be able to engage directly with the American people using his new @POTUS handle.

Update: The good news is, Google have now fixed the problem and a search on Google maps with the N-word along with the word house now has no results.

[Photos: Screen grabs from Google Maps, White House CC BY 2.0 Serge Melki]

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