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The original Unicode emoji made sense as a compatibility measure with Japanese encodings, but I thoroughly disagree with the expansion of Unicode Emoji. The id

The original Unicode emoji made sense as a compatibility measure with Japanese encodings, but I thoroughly disagree with the expansion of Unicode Emoji. The idea that the default emoji represent white people is ridiculous, since the codepoints are meant to translate directly with Japanese computer systems. In the original NTT DoCoMo set, they didn't even have facial skin (probably because of device resolution and colour limitations), just features like eyes and mouths. Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow, which people now associate strongly with the Simpsons, where white people are represented as bright saturated yellow. In my understanding, nobody in the standardization process even considered that Emoji had a race. If people project one race or another onto what are supposed to be disembodied universal facial expressions, then that's their problem.

userbinator 9y ago
Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow, which people now associate strongly with the Simpsons, where white people are represented as bright saturated yellow. Those who aren't as familiar with the Simpsons would probably associate yellow with Asian --- which sort of makes sense due to them originally being Japanese. Coloured emoji don't make much sense to me either --- they are text like any other, and should thus be represented with the same colour as the text.
- bearbearbear 9y ago
  Why would you consider yellow to be asian? Asians aren't yellow...
  - userbinator 9y ago
    Neither do white people look pure white, nor are blacks actually black...
    - bearbearbear 9y ago
      True, however, Asians aren't even close to yellow.
      - smsm42 9y ago
        These terms usually have long and weird history and often do not base on any actual observation but on layers of theory that for modern eye would justifiably appear completely bonkers. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts Of course, people using these terms now often have no idea where they come from.
avian 9y ago
> Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow I don't think Unicode consortium initially specified any color for these characters. For instance U+1F604 is defined as "SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES". I remember an early Android phone displaying these expressions on green robot faces. As far as I know color specifications only came later with the skin tone modifiers.
encryptThrow32 9y ago
I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you. For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment. Don't take that away over limitations in the spec. There are billions now who own smart phones, and want that funny Japanese Telco encoding standard to reflect their world too. This is not a technical or standards problem, and the fitzpatrick modifiers do not decrease functionality of unicode. I feel my point is to chill, and consider how functionality outside your perceived value might bring others joy.
- Oxitendwe 9y ago
  >For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment. Have you ever considered how condescending it is to these people to say that white people need to be the ones to give these people the ability to "reflect their world" via technology by encoding things relevant to other groups of people in the specifications they write? Why don't these people "fighting for recognition" write their specifications, and their own software? Making white people do it for them cannot be empowerment - it's charity, and with that charity comes dependence, which is the exact opposite of "empowerment". The only real empowerment comes from the self, not by other people deigning to give you things for free so their peers will think more highly of them.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    So read what you wrote and take note that you've implicitly assumed that Unicode and so on are strictly a product of "white people", a ridiculous notion.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you. Quite literally nobody has bright yellow skin. Emoji are not human beings, they are エモ → e-mo → emotion 字 → ji → characters (update: apparently I've been misled, but not in a way which changes my point, see reply below). The codepoints do not contain, have never contained, and will never contain a racial identity. They are an abstract representation of universal human emotions, just as generic as single-line ASCII emoticons. Nobody's racial identity was represented by Unicode emoji faces to begin with, and certainly nobody any less than me.
parenthephobia 9y ago
> Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow They didn't. It's recommended, but not required, to use a "non-realistic" colour, examples being yellow, blue, or gray. http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html#Diversity http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html#Diversity

userbinator 9y ago

Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow, which people now associate strongly with the Simpsons, where white people are represented as bright saturated yellow. Those who aren't as familiar with the Simpsons would probably associate yellow with Asian --- which sort of makes sense due to them originally being Japanese. Coloured emoji don't make much sense to me either --- they are text like any other, and should thus be represented with the same colour as the text.

bearbearbear 9y ago
Why would you consider yellow to be asian? Asians aren't yellow...
- userbinator 9y ago
  Neither do white people look pure white, nor are blacks actually black...
  - bearbearbear 9y ago
    True, however, Asians aren't even close to yellow.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      These terms usually have long and weird history and often do not base on any actual observation but on layers of theory that for modern eye would justifiably appear completely bonkers. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts Of course, people using these terms now often have no idea where they come from.

avian 9y ago

> Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow I don't think Unicode consortium initially specified any color for these characters. For instance U+1F604 is defined as "SMILING FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH AND SMILING EYES". I remember an early Android phone displaying these expressions on green robot faces. As far as I know color specifications only came later with the skin tone modifiers.

encryptThrow32 9y ago

I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you. For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment. Don't take that away over limitations in the spec. There are billions now who own smart phones, and want that funny Japanese Telco encoding standard to reflect their world too. This is not a technical or standards problem, and the fitzpatrick modifiers do not decrease functionality of unicode. I feel my point is to chill, and consider how functionality outside your perceived value might bring others joy.

Oxitendwe 9y ago
>For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment. Have you ever considered how condescending it is to these people to say that white people need to be the ones to give these people the ability to "reflect their world" via technology by encoding things relevant to other groups of people in the specifications they write? Why don't these people "fighting for recognition" write their specifications, and their own software? Making white people do it for them cannot be empowerment - it's charity, and with that charity comes dependence, which is the exact opposite of "empowerment". The only real empowerment comes from the self, not by other people deigning to give you things for free so their peers will think more highly of them.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  So read what you wrote and take note that you've implicitly assumed that Unicode and so on are strictly a product of "white people", a ridiculous notion.
microcolonel 9y ago
> I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you. Quite literally nobody has bright yellow skin. Emoji are not human beings, they are エモ → e-mo → emotion 字 → ji → characters (update: apparently I've been misled, but not in a way which changes my point, see reply below). The codepoints do not contain, have never contained, and will never contain a racial identity. They are an abstract representation of universal human emotions, just as generic as single-line ASCII emoticons. Nobody's racial identity was represented by Unicode emoji faces to begin with, and certainly nobody any less than me.

parenthephobia 9y ago

> Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow They didn't. It's recommended, but not required, to use a "non-realistic" colour, examples being yellow, blue, or gray. http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html#Diversity http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html#Diversity