This thread is so good that I registered just to post.
We were working on a public site for an independent phone company in the Midwest. They wanted friendly faces to match each element in the main nav, so we picked a few stock images, including one of an African-American woman wearing an operator's headset.
Two days later, the client *faxed* us a copy of the entire site, which they had printed out to examine more carefully. Someone had crossed out the picture of the headset woman and scrawled "CAUCASIAN" next to it. I literally lost my balance when I saw it.
We found another photo.