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IMHO adding different skin tones to emojis is racism, just like if we added multiple skin tones to letters and everybody was only allowed to use their own. And

IMHO adding different skin tones to emojis is racism, just like if we added multiple skin tones to letters and everybody was only allowed to use their own. And this also introduces unnecessary complexity and clutters the screen space. Is a field to set your skin color in the app/browser/OS settings so the proper handshake emoji would be chosen automatically according to that and that of the counterpart the next thing to come?

realusername 6y ago
I do agree with that, adding skin colors was at best of very poor taste, additional unnecessary information nobody needed, emojis already being the most universal concept you can get. If you really want to look them different, add a system-wide setting to change all of them, I personally would like to remove them all.
grenoire 6y ago
That's basically what you already do with quite a few apps. Discord have a total override on the default skin colour, for one.
gundmc 6y ago
I don't think it's racist, but I do find it a little odd when someone takes the time to purposefully select a non-default skin tone. As a white person, it feels weird to go out of my way to send a white emoji and feels even weirder to use a black or brown emoji. I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces.
- avhception 6y ago
  It's even weirder with some apps that seem to default on the black or brown emojis instead of the yellow ones. I guess they try to be extra-inclusive, BLM and all that? Dunno, but as a white person I sent the "wrong" skin color by accident multiple times and kept wondering what this actually means. Am I appropriating a skin color? Am I being extra inclusive? I just wish we would have kept real skin colors out of the emojis.
- iainmerrick 6y ago
  I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces. Instinctively I agree with you, but: does that yellow color remind you of the Simpsons? On that show, the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown. The yellow isn’t really neutral.
  - niceairport 6y ago
    Ah yes, the Simpsons, the source of truth for all things life.
  - 1337shadow 6y ago
    Exactly why I want Cyan, but it's not available, I feel excluded, apparently the community needs to be more inclusive to people who want to identify with Cyan colored emojis.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Jokes aside, the programmer in me wonders why there are individual skin tone code points in the first place, instead of generic (colorless) "skin tone modifier", which would then be followed by a color codepoint from a palette of named colors, say 256 of those. So I'd write: Rightward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Green, ZJW, Leftward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Blue, to express a handshake between an Orion and an Andorian. Or, if 256 colors are not enough, you could write a combination of RGBA Color Modifier + eight characters in [0-9A-Fa-F] range... This would also help with hair colors and bunch of other stuff that has separate code points at the moment. I have a feeling we'll end up with an approximation of this at some point, maybe a decade from now.
  - throwaway210222 6y ago
    > On [the Simpsons], the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown. To be fair, the asians are yellow in the Simpsons :) [1]. [1] https://tokyofox.net/2015/02/13/japan-related-references-in-the-simpsons/ https://tokyofox.net/2015/02/13/japan-related-references-in-... I'm truly disappointed the woke haven't pursued this.
- sildur 6y ago
  I see it like customizing player aspect in video games.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces. Have you ever noticed how in The Simpsons all the “white” characters have an unrealistic skin tone in a primary color as well as often unrealistic hair textures and colors but all the other races have realistic skin tones and hair textures and colors for their races? There's also a rather interesting cultural difference in this. U.S.A. viewers often wonder why Japanese cartoon characters look what they consider “white”, whereas Japanese viewers consider them what they consider “yellow”. The lesson to be learned from this is that a not insignificant number, perhaps majority, of viewers replaces “nonrealism” with what it considers to be the default, unmarked expectation of the world. For U.S.A.-men, that is “white”, for Japanmen, that is “yellow”. It doesn't so much seem to be one's own “race” but the “race” one most frequently encounters in life, as U.S.A.-men of all “races” seem to do so. The end result is that for many, the amber skin tone is not true neutral territory, even though objectively speaking it is, for they perceive it as replaceable with whatever race is the most frequent in their milieu. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek5MqILXIAEdC3k.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek5MqILXIAEdC3k.jpg This image is most interesting and ironic to me. The auctor of said image seems to strongly imply that the stick figures that has the same color as the background are “white”, but it is not even clear whether they are transparent or simply the same, unnatural color as the background, whereas the other characters have a realistic, plausible human skin tone rather than a primary color such as perfect black. The “white” characters are not a realistic hue of beige, for instance. — I find such to have an interesting influence on the discussion, in that I often see that some people seem to perceive fictional characters that are raceless, due to for instance being of alien origin, to essentially have the “race” they consider the unmarked default of their milieu. In particular, I had a discussion once where there was complaint about “changing the race” of the character of Tyrael. This character is a angel, who like all angels in that universe is faceless, nothing of his body but a vague humanoid shape clad in full body armor was ever shown, but when he was given human form, he had to be given such human features as a gender and a race, so they choose a “black adult male”, and some complaint that his “race was changed”; it seems to me that the character that had no race, age, or gender was consider a “white adult male” by them, which is the unmarked default in their milieu, that which they most frequently see and interact with.
  - 6y ago
austinjp 6y ago
Emoji are pictures, alphabetical letters are not. Racism how?
- dagurp 6y ago
  What was the motivation behind adding skin tones other than racism?
  - mnd999 6y ago
    Inclusivity, people wanted emojis that looked liked them. If that makes them happy, then why not? Of course it can be abused, but then you could just as easily send racist words.
    - dagurp 6y ago
      I wouldn't call the default yellow color non-inclusive because it's equally wrong for everyone
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
How do you define racism?
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  The real issue is threefold in nature: definitions of racism have and are changing rapidly, secondly its not any personal (or dictionary) definition that counts but a kind of collective acceptance of a definition which carries the most weight, and thirdly, if someone says they are offended or says that it is actually racism, then they should be listened to. It might not be a problem now, but it could be.
tashi 6y ago
It would probably be racist if you were only allowed to use the one most closely matching your skin tone. Fortunately we get to choose, so it's not. I like getting to pick colors for things. It's fun. I use colored fonts too sometimes.
Hoasi 6y ago
This is an interesting way to look at it. Indeed, as innocuous as it is, it forces a person to somehow identify with a skin color or at least make a choice.
murderfs 6y ago
It's vaguely amusing to me that there's nothing even vaguely resembling an East Asian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color When are the hair color or epicanthic fold ZWJs getting added?
- galgalesh 6y ago
  Note that the skin tones are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology.
dang 6y ago
> racism "Eschew flamebait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- enriquto 6y ago
  I don't understand whats flamebaity about the OP. This is an article literally about skin colors; thus it is somewhat natural that the word "racism" will appear in a harmless way, as here.
  - dang 6y ago
    It wasn't in a harmless way; it was making an inflammatory accusation of racism; not only that, but in a form which is repeated so often as to be a flamewar trope ("that's racist"), and in a way that clearly signalled ideological battle. That is exactly the sort of thing the HN guidelines ask commenters to avoid.
enriquto 6y ago
> adding different skin tones to emojis is racism Sure. And people with vitiligo are shamefully discriminated against. Bright yellow "skin" was an obviously impossible color that did not identify anybody, and that was beautiful. We have lost this beauty.
- McGlockenshire 6y ago
  You have lost nothing. The old emoji are not going away.
dqpb 6y ago
Fundamentally, racism is the belief in race. It's bad because the whole concept of race is flawed and therefore applying it to anything else is flawed. However, skin tone is real and skin tone does not equal race. So I don't think skin tone emojis are racist. Rather, I think your argument should be that skin tone emojis will be "triggering" for racists.

realusername 6y ago

I do agree with that, adding skin colors was at best of very poor taste, additional unnecessary information nobody needed, emojis already being the most universal concept you can get. If you really want to look them different, add a system-wide setting to change all of them, I personally would like to remove them all.

grenoire 6y ago

That's basically what you already do with quite a few apps. Discord have a total override on the default skin colour, for one.

gundmc 6y ago

I don't think it's racist, but I do find it a little odd when someone takes the time to purposefully select a non-default skin tone. As a white person, it feels weird to go out of my way to send a white emoji and feels even weirder to use a black or brown emoji. I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces.

avhception 6y ago
It's even weirder with some apps that seem to default on the black or brown emojis instead of the yellow ones. I guess they try to be extra-inclusive, BLM and all that? Dunno, but as a white person I sent the "wrong" skin color by accident multiple times and kept wondering what this actually means. Am I appropriating a skin color? Am I being extra inclusive? I just wish we would have kept real skin colors out of the emojis.
iainmerrick 6y ago
I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces. Instinctively I agree with you, but: does that yellow color remind you of the Simpsons? On that show, the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown. The yellow isn’t really neutral.
- niceairport 6y ago
  Ah yes, the Simpsons, the source of truth for all things life.
- 1337shadow 6y ago
  Exactly why I want Cyan, but it's not available, I feel excluded, apparently the community needs to be more inclusive to people who want to identify with Cyan colored emojis.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Jokes aside, the programmer in me wonders why there are individual skin tone code points in the first place, instead of generic (colorless) "skin tone modifier", which would then be followed by a color codepoint from a palette of named colors, say 256 of those. So I'd write: Rightward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Green, ZJW, Leftward Hand + Generic Skin Tone + Blue, to express a handshake between an Orion and an Andorian. Or, if 256 colors are not enough, you could write a combination of RGBA Color Modifier + eight characters in [0-9A-Fa-F] range... This would also help with hair colors and bunch of other stuff that has separate code points at the moment. I have a feeling we'll end up with an approximation of this at some point, maybe a decade from now.
- throwaway210222 6y ago
  > On [the Simpsons], the white people are yellow but the brown people are brown. To be fair, the asians are yellow in the Simpsons :) [1]. [1] https://tokyofox.net/2015/02/13/japan-related-references-in-the-simpsons/ https://tokyofox.net/2015/02/13/japan-related-references-in-... I'm truly disappointed the woke haven't pursued this.
sildur 6y ago
I see it like customizing player aspect in video games.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> I'm all for inclusion, but it's not like anyone's skin is the yellow color of the default faces. Have you ever noticed how in The Simpsons all the “white” characters have an unrealistic skin tone in a primary color as well as often unrealistic hair textures and colors but all the other races have realistic skin tones and hair textures and colors for their races? There's also a rather interesting cultural difference in this. U.S.A. viewers often wonder why Japanese cartoon characters look what they consider “white”, whereas Japanese viewers consider them what they consider “yellow”. The lesson to be learned from this is that a not insignificant number, perhaps majority, of viewers replaces “nonrealism” with what it considers to be the default, unmarked expectation of the world. For U.S.A.-men, that is “white”, for Japanmen, that is “yellow”. It doesn't so much seem to be one's own “race” but the “race” one most frequently encounters in life, as U.S.A.-men of all “races” seem to do so. The end result is that for many, the amber skin tone is not true neutral territory, even though objectively speaking it is, for they perceive it as replaceable with whatever race is the most frequent in their milieu. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek5MqILXIAEdC3k.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ek5MqILXIAEdC3k.jpg This image is most interesting and ironic to me. The auctor of said image seems to strongly imply that the stick figures that has the same color as the background are “white”, but it is not even clear whether they are transparent or simply the same, unnatural color as the background, whereas the other characters have a realistic, plausible human skin tone rather than a primary color such as perfect black. The “white” characters are not a realistic hue of beige, for instance. — I find such to have an interesting influence on the discussion, in that I often see that some people seem to perceive fictional characters that are raceless, due to for instance being of alien origin, to essentially have the “race” they consider the unmarked default of their milieu. In particular, I had a discussion once where there was complaint about “changing the race” of the character of Tyrael. This character is a angel, who like all angels in that universe is faceless, nothing of his body but a vague humanoid shape clad in full body armor was ever shown, but when he was given human form, he had to be given such human features as a gender and a race, so they choose a “black adult male”, and some complaint that his “race was changed”; it seems to me that the character that had no race, age, or gender was consider a “white adult male” by them, which is the unmarked default in their milieu, that which they most frequently see and interact with.
- 6y ago

austinjp 6y ago

Emoji are pictures, alphabetical letters are not. Racism how?

dagurp 6y ago
What was the motivation behind adding skin tones other than racism?
- mnd999 6y ago
  Inclusivity, people wanted emojis that looked liked them. If that makes them happy, then why not? Of course it can be abused, but then you could just as easily send racist words.
  - dagurp 6y ago
    I wouldn't call the default yellow color non-inclusive because it's equally wrong for everyone

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

How do you define racism?

thinkingemote 6y ago
The real issue is threefold in nature: definitions of racism have and are changing rapidly, secondly its not any personal (or dictionary) definition that counts but a kind of collective acceptance of a definition which carries the most weight, and thirdly, if someone says they are offended or says that it is actually racism, then they should be listened to. It might not be a problem now, but it could be.

tashi 6y ago

It would probably be racist if you were only allowed to use the one most closely matching your skin tone. Fortunately we get to choose, so it's not. I like getting to pick colors for things. It's fun. I use colored fonts too sometimes.

Hoasi 6y ago

This is an interesting way to look at it. Indeed, as innocuous as it is, it forces a person to somehow identify with a skin color or at least make a choice.

murderfs 6y ago

It's vaguely amusing to me that there's nothing even vaguely resembling an East Asian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#Skin_color When are the hair color or epicanthic fold ZWJs getting added?

galgalesh 6y ago
Note that the skin tones are based on the six tones of the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognized standard for dermatology.

dang 6y ago

> racism "Eschew flamebait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

enriquto 6y ago
I don't understand whats flamebaity about the OP. This is an article literally about skin colors; thus it is somewhat natural that the word "racism" will appear in a harmless way, as here.
- dang 6y ago
  It wasn't in a harmless way; it was making an inflammatory accusation of racism; not only that, but in a form which is repeated so often as to be a flamewar trope ("that's racist"), and in a way that clearly signalled ideological battle. That is exactly the sort of thing the HN guidelines ask commenters to avoid.

enriquto 6y ago

> adding different skin tones to emojis is racism Sure. And people with vitiligo are shamefully discriminated against. Bright yellow "skin" was an obviously impossible color that did not identify anybody, and that was beautiful. We have lost this beauty.

McGlockenshire 6y ago
You have lost nothing. The old emoji are not going away.

dqpb 6y ago

Fundamentally, racism is the belief in race. It's bad because the whole concept of race is flawed and therefore applying it to anything else is flawed. However, skin tone is real and skin tone does not equal race. So I don't think skin tone emojis are racist. Rather, I think your argument should be that skin tone emojis will be "triggering" for racists.