3 ms·
> neutral non-racial thing But was it really? Serious question: Do you think that if the majority of people in the US, and particularly the majority of middle
by SamBam 6y ago
> neutral non-racial thing
But was it really?
Serious question: Do you think that if the majority of people in the US, and particularly the majority of middle and upper classes and tech folk, were Black that they would have defaulted to a yellow color for emoji?
That's not even getting into how all the "man" "woman" "child" etc emoji had stereotypical white-people hair etc.
- fossuser 6y agoMake the color blue then if yellow isn’t neutral enough (like iMessage tapbacks, or Facebook thumbs up). Make the people more abstract. I’d argue the direction should be towards generality not identity specificity. I’m not dogmatic and obviously my point of view on this is a lost cause, but I generally think the universalist ideal is better and should be the goal. I do think yellow was intentionally chosen to be universal and not to be read as “white”.
- kalleboo 6y agoTo expand on this: The original emoji were created in Japan and had light skin tone to match Japanese users[0] (with a few exceptions of other racial stereotypes - like "person wearing turban"[1]). After they gained international popularity, their rendering was changed to yellow in an attempt to be more neutral. I'm guessing yellow was chosen to match the yellow "smiley face" which few had objected to historically [0] https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-6.0/boy/ https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-6.0/boy/ [1] https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-6.0/person-wearing-turban/ https://emojipedia.org/apple/ios-6.0/person-wearing-turban/