Huh, I always thought it was a motion detector... wouldn't black skin contrast more with the light porcelain of the sink?

In any case, I am terrible at setting off automatic soap dispensers, automatic toilets, automatic doors, anything. I always assumed it was because the technology sucked, not because the machines hated me.

I agree with NicoleK. I don't believe the conspiracy against black an brown but I know crummy design when I see it.

NicoleK, some setups do have a hard time distinguishing black skin. Of course other setups have a hard time distinguishing white skin. Then there is the issue of just where the device is looking. At this time it isn't obvious if your hands are too high, too low, too close, or too far away. Not to mention what happens when the thing get old and dirty.

As an engineer when I hear someone complaining about racist faucets I say build a better one and sell it.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been reduced to jazz hands trying to get the stupid auto-anything working in the rest room. And with my Irish heritage, there's no way the machine reads me as anything but white. Racism? Seriously?

In the meantime, this reminds me of an episode of the corporate parody show, Better Off Ted, in which the company's new motion detectors cannot detect black people. As a result, the automatic lights and the automatic water fountains don't work for them. In response to the water fountain issue, the company installs manual fountains for affected employees, placing them where the recycling bins had been - with the old paper-sorting labels still in place, "White" and "Colored." When that doesn't work, every black employee gets a white guy. Eventually, the company goes back to manual switches as providing every black employee with a white guy proved too expensive.

Every Reagan-loving, money-grubbing, allegedly right-wing parent who sacrificed her children to the education machine because she wanted them to get a prestigious degree from a Vietnam War draft-dodging red-rose-Fabian faculty so they'd be prepared to get out there and get on their knees for corporate America - making powerpoints, accruing debt, being fearful of losing a job or misspeaking - is to blame for America today, with its anti-intellectual, conformist, scared-rabbit "professional" class of fools who think a BA from a directional school makes them a better human being than someone who works with his or her hands.

The Bill Ayerses and Bernardine Dorhns and Woodrow Wilsons and John Deweys of the world let everyone know they were snakes and serpents and scorpions; you can't blame a scorpion for being a scorpion. You can blame the idiot who goes into debt to get his kids that parchment from an institution designed to accomplish Wilson's goal: "The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible."

There aren't factory jobs anymore. The conformity, domestication, and passification to corporate masters of the vast majority of American people continues unabated - and Pres. Biden will dump billions of debt into offering free conformity training in being a good victim at our nation's community colleges. Being a victim is fitting the mold that they are all shaped into by the "education" apparatus.

The full Wilson quote:

The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/R68e61e9f9b7731b05092099378517810?rik=BBTl9pwvceFysQ&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.1ksmiles.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f07%2frestroom-attendant-100.jpg&ehk=xtYyfIYdQUdcdCX53i2uaZcdfvT%2fdR2k%2bSth0bkIu2E%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw

Would they like this solution? It would create jobs.

I always assumed they used infra red sensors. I too have problems with them and the sensor blow dryers. I might add, with my age I am having increased trouble with biometric finger print detectors. When I last renewed my concealed handgun license the technician was using an optical finger print reader and was having trouble getting a good print. She told me as we get older our fingerprints start getting more difficult for optical devices to see. Of course, (sarcasm on) I think I need to riot against systemic ageism.

Regardless it's nice that diversity, exclusion and intolerance training is working to create a generation of perennial victims.

I call Hoax on this one. Someone is having a good laugh playing these "victims" for the following reasons.

1. The natural inclination is to put your hand palm up in order to catch the soap as it drizzles from the dispenser.

2. As mentioned above, these dispensers use movement or heat to sense the proximity of your hand and activate.

3. You would have to be a moron with major paranoia problems to believe that designers spend time, money and effort into designing and installing a feature to make it difficult for minorities to use.

Most use an infrared detector to "see" elevated temperatures, as those are much less expensive to produce and use.

The other two detecting methods googling came up with use active sensors, and wouldn't be battery friendly IMO. Appears that college students aren't curious how things work.

@Darth:

Point of clarification:

When you say that college students aren’t curious about how things work, do you mean —
1. They don’t take the time to look up how IR sensors, generally or when used on faucets, work?; or,
2. They don’t know to put their hands under the faucet near the IR sensor to activate the water flow?

I was talking to a woman from Ethiopia who moved here. At a water fountain she was in line behind some white people and they got a drink and when she got there nothing happened. She thought it was racism. Then someone helpfully showed her that you put your hand under the front and it turns on. She laughed about thinking it was racism, that a water fountain could be racist. But these kids have no sense of humor nor common sense.
What they fail to grasp in general is that lots of stuff is poorly designed, things are not perfect, they are not the center of the universe (which does not care about them), sales people can be rude, and society is not their mother. So they show paranoid symptoms that every inconvenience is racism. I know a black guy who thinks people stare at him because he is black, but it is because he is odd looking and walks with a limp (if anyone is in fact staring).

Mirrors are racist, because they don't show everybody has the same skin color! Conspiracy!

Or this is just the last parody to get the eyeball count up, to make someone unimportant more so.

Can we burn Weird Al now? (Helpful explanation at Wikipedia for those who have no clue)

It's not the best design, but for a very bad design area. Having a motion sensor where the water/soap comes out kind of over-rides the motion sensor since it must ignore the moving water/soap coming out otherwise it would be an infinite loop detecting motion of water/soap causing more water/soap to be released.
For the IR option of it, hot water or a hot day would cause more problems. Even cold water, once it hits your hands cools them off masking your IR signature.
The area is likely to get dirty quickly and often, splashed soap, dirt and water onto the sensors. And since it is not a highly visible part it is less likely to be cleaned. Hand towel ones are better design since the sensor is above the moving item, so can be more sensitive.

But when people assume any problem is racism/sexism/ any other "ism", it will make everything worse.

It's anti-white racism of the worst kind: assuming white people are dirty and need soap but black people don't.

Soapism must end.