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The “LEGO (race) problem” was only a problem once LEGO began licensing IP (it was NBA first, not Star Wars, actually) and had to make minifigs to match real peo

The “LEGO (race) problem” was only a problem once LEGO began licensing IP (it was NBA first, not Star Wars, actually) and had to make minifigs to match real people. Before that, minifigs were perfectly raceless, able to abstractly represent whatever sort of characters that children could imagine—just like the yellow emojis. Yellow minifigs aren't “white”—they're “LEGO people”. Any other interpretation is post-hoc historical revisionism imagining past racial bias in domains where it was never present. Yellow LEGO minifigs (1978) predate The Simpsons (1987). There is no evidence to my knowledge that the latter was directly influenced by the former, such that the “yellow minifigs = white” line of reasoning makes any sense at all.

adammarples 1y ago
One doesn't have to have influenced the other, it's just pretty obvious that Matt Groening and the mostly white 70's Danes chose yellow as a cartoonish white skin colour surrogate, it's not a fluke, as the other commenter says.
- adamrezich 1y ago
  Honest question: do you see Caucasian features in the default yellow smiley face ideogram? When Wal-Mart used it as their logo, was that an attempt to market toward white people specifically? When a Japanese guy drew the first widely-used set of emoji, do you think he was doing so under the auspices of white supremacy (so strongly that he didn't even notice the “yellow = Asian” racist stereotype he was obviously participating in)?
  - jameshart 1y ago
    Well now you’re bringing white supremacy into a conversation that is more about white defaultism. Nobody is saying that yellow emoji are white supremacist propaganda. The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. And when dark skinned people choose to use skin tone emoji for themselves it is just a bit kind of weird (just weird; not racist, not white supremacist) for white people to carry on using the yellow version. And then it’s especially weird to continue to insist that it’s racially neutral in the face of the evidence that it really isn’t.
    - adamrezich 1y ago
      > The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. A citation is needed for this extraordinary claim.
      - jameshart 1y ago
        It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there has actually been academic research done on the topic: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Black_or_White_ROBERTSON_DOA24032021_AFV.pdf https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Bl... > The yellow emoji is not perceived as neutral by either Black or White readers. On average, both groups perceive it as more likely to index a White identity, and we find this effect to be stronger among White readers.
        ryandrake 1y ago
        I wonder if this could be solved by just making the default emoji green or blue or something.
        TheCycoONE 1y ago
        Skeeter is blue but represents black; Ice king is blue but almost certainly white. I don't know where Megamind fits in; and the Smurfs are almost certainly 'other'. I think you're onto something.
        account42 1y ago
        The advantage of a neutral color is that it can be whatever you want in your local theme. Back when they were images supplied by the respective forum/etc. instead of giant fonts that only mega-corporations can afford to maintain it was not uncommon to have emoticons styled and colored differently to match the site theme and/or subject matter instead of the standard yellow.
        adamrezich 1y ago
  - numpad0 1y ago
    (smileys in Japanese emojis pre-Unicode were mostly ham colored, not yellow) https://www.docomo.ne.jp/info/news_release/page/20060711.html https://www.docomo.ne.jp/info/news_release/page/20060711.htm...
jameshart 1y ago
I apologize, you don’t seem to have followed my argument. Lego had already put out a number of licensed sets featuring specific ‘real people’ (Star Wars characters) using just yellow minifigs. That changed in 2003 (same year as the NBA license) when they released the Cloud City set, and evidently came to the realization that they could not continue to use yellow for all characters. That set includes yellow Han and Leia minifigs, by the way - white skin tone minifigs came later. The point is that if the claim which, yes, Lego has made since 1978, that yellow was neutral and could represent any race – if that claim has any value, they could have proudly released 10123 Cloud City with a yellow Lando. They didn’t. Yellow turns out not to have been as neutral as they believed. Lando proves it. As for Lego vs the Simpsons I didn’t claim any causative influence between the two - just pointing out that Simpsons made the same choice, with yellow representing white people, and nonwhite people having different skin tones. Both Lego and the Simpsons have accidentally encoded a white default under a ‘nonrealistic color choice’. My point is that emojis have done exactly the same thing.
- inanutshellus 1y ago
  It's funny, because I think of emojis as entirely co-opted from the Japanese and so see the images in that context not having anything to do with LEGO or The Simpsons. The Japanese were SO COOL and ... lucky? with their extensive creativity making of the original text emojis that folk wanted to play along too... so picture emoijs came along.
  - adamrezich 1y ago
    It's all downstream of yellow smiley faces (1950s)—raceless ideograms conveying a common emotion (happiness) that humans of all races happen to share—and I honestly have no idea how this seems to escape everyone today.
    - inanutshellus 1y ago
      Oh I agree. They're from the gold smiley face stickers extrapolated to more emotions. I meant that I _don't_ connect the gold to Simpsons and LEGO. I just connect the whole emoji concept to the Japanese and thus don't consider anything about it at all to be "white-centric". Once you do associate the smiley faces with LEGO/Simpsons then you do start to make these connections that... just don't need to be there and let the conversation get muddled in drama.
Atlas667 1y ago
I dont think you understood his comment. He's right. And not because they intentionally made yellow into white, but because they unintentionally made it so. It's exactly the same as being an american vs being an african-american. You don't call white americans european-americans. Society (or media) assigned a racial default. I'm gonna be a little more forward with this last argument: This is the product of mixed societies that have not dealt with racial bias and/or the consequences of racism well.
- philwelch 1y ago
  If you interpret the term “American” to only refer to white people, maybe you’re the one with racial problems.
  - Atlas667 1y ago
    You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?. Same as "native-american". The fact is that there already exists a racial default, I didn't make it, it simply exists due to the nuances of our society, its history and/or its media. I didn't invent either term and I am not THE dictionary. This is how these terms are interpreted by the world and also through simple logic. I am not the one who interprets these terms and their usage. American society and culture is still severely segregated due to how crappily it dealt with the consequences of its racist history. White americans are considered american and black americans are considered african americans. It is not a mutually exclusive truth, but it is the norm, and that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about pure logic of meaning, we're talking about social usage of terms.
    - account42 1y ago
      > You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent? Because in the current ((zeitgeist)) Europeans are not allowed to have a racial identity.

adammarples 1y ago

One doesn't have to have influenced the other, it's just pretty obvious that Matt Groening and the mostly white 70's Danes chose yellow as a cartoonish white skin colour surrogate, it's not a fluke, as the other commenter says.

adamrezich 1y ago
Honest question: do you see Caucasian features in the default yellow smiley face ideogram? When Wal-Mart used it as their logo, was that an attempt to market toward white people specifically? When a Japanese guy drew the first widely-used set of emoji, do you think he was doing so under the auspices of white supremacy (so strongly that he didn't even notice the “yellow = Asian” racist stereotype he was obviously participating in)?
- jameshart 1y ago
  Well now you’re bringing white supremacy into a conversation that is more about white defaultism. Nobody is saying that yellow emoji are white supremacist propaganda. The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. And when dark skinned people choose to use skin tone emoji for themselves it is just a bit kind of weird (just weird; not racist, not white supremacist) for white people to carry on using the yellow version. And then it’s especially weird to continue to insist that it’s racially neutral in the face of the evidence that it really isn’t.
  - adamrezich 1y ago
    > The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. A citation is needed for this extraordinary claim.
    - jameshart 1y ago
      It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there has actually been academic research done on the topic: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Black_or_White_ROBERTSON_DOA24032021_AFV.pdf https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Bl... > The yellow emoji is not perceived as neutral by either Black or White readers. On average, both groups perceive it as more likely to index a White identity, and we find this effect to be stronger among White readers.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        I wonder if this could be solved by just making the default emoji green or blue or something.
        TheCycoONE 1y ago
        Skeeter is blue but represents black; Ice king is blue but almost certainly white. I don't know where Megamind fits in; and the Smurfs are almost certainly 'other'. I think you're onto something.
        account42 1y ago
        The advantage of a neutral color is that it can be whatever you want in your local theme. Back when they were images supplied by the respective forum/etc. instead of giant fonts that only mega-corporations can afford to maintain it was not uncommon to have emoticons styled and colored differently to match the site theme and/or subject matter instead of the standard yellow.
      - adamrezich 1y ago
- numpad0 1y ago
  (smileys in Japanese emojis pre-Unicode were mostly ham colored, not yellow) https://www.docomo.ne.jp/info/news_release/page/20060711.html https://www.docomo.ne.jp/info/news_release/page/20060711.htm...

jameshart 1y ago

I apologize, you don’t seem to have followed my argument. Lego had already put out a number of licensed sets featuring specific ‘real people’ (Star Wars characters) using just yellow minifigs. That changed in 2003 (same year as the NBA license) when they released the Cloud City set, and evidently came to the realization that they could not continue to use yellow for all characters. That set includes yellow Han and Leia minifigs, by the way - white skin tone minifigs came later. The point is that if the claim which, yes, Lego has made since 1978, that yellow was neutral and could represent any race – if that claim has any value, they could have proudly released 10123 Cloud City with a yellow Lando. They didn’t. Yellow turns out not to have been as neutral as they believed. Lando proves it. As for Lego vs the Simpsons I didn’t claim any causative influence between the two - just pointing out that Simpsons made the same choice, with yellow representing white people, and nonwhite people having different skin tones. Both Lego and the Simpsons have accidentally encoded a white default under a ‘nonrealistic color choice’. My point is that emojis have done exactly the same thing.

inanutshellus 1y ago
It's funny, because I think of emojis as entirely co-opted from the Japanese and so see the images in that context not having anything to do with LEGO or The Simpsons. The Japanese were SO COOL and ... lucky? with their extensive creativity making of the original text emojis that folk wanted to play along too... so picture emoijs came along.
- adamrezich 1y ago
  It's all downstream of yellow smiley faces (1950s)—raceless ideograms conveying a common emotion (happiness) that humans of all races happen to share—and I honestly have no idea how this seems to escape everyone today.
  - inanutshellus 1y ago
    Oh I agree. They're from the gold smiley face stickers extrapolated to more emotions. I meant that I _don't_ connect the gold to Simpsons and LEGO. I just connect the whole emoji concept to the Japanese and thus don't consider anything about it at all to be "white-centric". Once you do associate the smiley faces with LEGO/Simpsons then you do start to make these connections that... just don't need to be there and let the conversation get muddled in drama.

Atlas667 1y ago

I dont think you understood his comment. He's right. And not because they intentionally made yellow into white, but because they unintentionally made it so. It's exactly the same as being an american vs being an african-american. You don't call white americans european-americans. Society (or media) assigned a racial default. I'm gonna be a little more forward with this last argument: This is the product of mixed societies that have not dealt with racial bias and/or the consequences of racism well.

philwelch 1y ago
If you interpret the term “American” to only refer to white people, maybe you’re the one with racial problems.
- Atlas667 1y ago
  You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?. Same as "native-american". The fact is that there already exists a racial default, I didn't make it, it simply exists due to the nuances of our society, its history and/or its media. I didn't invent either term and I am not THE dictionary. This is how these terms are interpreted by the world and also through simple logic. I am not the one who interprets these terms and their usage. American society and culture is still severely segregated due to how crappily it dealt with the consequences of its racist history. White americans are considered american and black americans are considered african americans. It is not a mutually exclusive truth, but it is the norm, and that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about pure logic of meaning, we're talking about social usage of terms.
  - account42 1y ago
    > You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent? Because in the current ((zeitgeist)) Europeans are not allowed to have a racial identity.