To 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 stereotype

To 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/