What is your take on this action to avert racial associations?

Microsoft had a campaign in Poland in which they used photoshop to change a black person into a white one (see first link below and notice the hand).

The company later withdrew that picture, replaced it with the original (second link) and made apologies over it (third link).

My thoughts are that I understand the sensitivity, but wouldn’t it indeed make more sense to use kaukasian people when focusing on Poland, rather than a black person and is it then indeed unethical to change the picture?

links: http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20090825/business_productivity_poland.JPG?tag=mncol;txt

http://www.microsoft.com/poland/businessproductivity/default.mspx

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10317763-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20