the one that gets me is adding race to emoji. they all used to be 'Simpsons yellow', a skin tone not found in any ethnic or racial group, and as such not representing or excluding any group but now we have black white and other various skin tones for our happy-faces. WHY? Does black happy face mean something different than white happy face isn't happiness universal? why bring race into something that was simply meant to express emotion?
I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some characters (like Apu) are not yellow.
You have to pick some skin tone for the default; just floating features would be off putting.
Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it. And it’s a small thing to have fixed that costs you basically nothing.
I say this as a non-white person who ostensibly should feel better represented by these emojis: a person who feels anxiety or exclusion when they see a yellow "thumbs up" is someone who has a low grade mental illness in need of address.
Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins. This is madness, and it's embarrassing for me and other right-thinking people to witness.
>Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might not feel represented in it.
> Well-meaning white people have been duped by a vocal minority of non-whites, who themselves were duped by cynical, washed out 60s radicals with bad ideas who failed to achieve anything in their time. You have been encouraged to treat non-whites like child emperors in your midst, whose every whim and dictate can only lead the way to racial harmony and absolution of your inherited sins.
We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something?
I agree it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it also isn’t a large change to offer skin tones as an option for people who want them. You can simply not use them if you don’t want to.
> What race is Milhouse, with his blue hair?
Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines
>We are still talking about adding some code points to Unicode here, right? Or did I miss something?
This is a matter of representation and inclusion, which are worthwhile goals that should matter to people in positions to make decisions.
Also, this is trivial and doesn't matter.
>Not Indian or Black. Almost certainly he reads as white to most people. The blue hair and yellow skin was not meant to signify the characters place outside of race, it was a stylistic consequence of them not having hairlines
No, you miss the point. It's a creatively liberal work, and viewing it through a racial lens is
1. a choice of the viewer
2. provides a flawed and inconsistent mapping back to human race
3. pathological
The fact that you engage the question and believe there is a sincere answer is the evidence of pathology, IMO. It shows a commitment to read race into everything, instead of acknowledging that blue-haired people don't exist, and so it's quite likely that the project of mapping a phylogeny back to homo sapiens is dubious.
What you're doing is exactly analogous to a hypothetical person claiming that the Simpsons was a pioneer in pro-ablism art and culture, because all characters have four fingers. It's pareidolia.
It’s not about me reading race into the Simpsons, I am saying that the “simpsons yellow” was not intended as a pan-racial skin tone and does not read that way for many people. The fact that minority characters are given a different skin tone than yellow, and the statements of the cartoonists suggest to me that the creators themselves do not view it that way, so it does not seem unreasonable for other people to not accept “simpsons yellow” as a pan-racial skin tone.
Can we at least agree on that or is that too a sign of some “pathology” on my part?
Then, if that’s true, and we think it’s a problem, adding more skin tones seems to me like a trivial fix; but this particular fix being of little cost does not cheapen the wider problems of diversity and inclusion.
Look, to me this is as preposterous as someone complaining that the eggplant and peach emojis should come in various shades. They aren't meant to be literal representations of your junk, and a yellow "thumbs up" is not meant to represent your actual hand. It's meant to represent your approval.
I agree it's a trivial change. To me the underlying issue is that, were it some non-racial domain this issue occured in, most people would have no problem seeing the claim that something so petty and insignificant has actually caused deep injury to my identity for what it is: absurd and possibly deranged. It's only when it comes to race that well meaning people are content to accept such absurd positions, thereby infantilizing the complainant.
And my real issue is that when you do that, it has been my observation that it changes your assumptions about all of "us". So I resent the default assumption that I am weak or need coddling, which is an assumption that I see many of your persuasion holding. (Acknowledging that some assumptions were made on my part just now as well)
There is something at best blind, and more likely to my mind, dishonest about the "It's just a trivial change" argument. It's used to bludgeon dissent. "You can't possibly be such a jerk you'd not do this small thing"
It isn't such a small thing - beyond making a bunch more work for a bunch of people, beyond picking which N other colors get recommended, beyond complicating UIs for all messaging apps, you've now raised the stakes and potentially introduced race into every message. Why didn't Sarah use the slightly darker thumbs up for me, when I'm slight darker than average? She must be a racist!
This really does happen -- I recently had someone complain about a person who only spoke somewhat broken English (as a second language), for not using inclusive language, and they specifically held it against them when selecting them for service (which has nothing to do with DEI issues).
Somewhere farther down another commenter asked if I would consider it race neutral if it was dark magenta.
My response was yeah sure.
If it is not a real skin tone it is neutral and i would feel just as attached to it and feel it is raceless equally as bright yellow. I don't feel anymore or less represented either.
Dark magenta would probably have the same problem that floating features have, which is it distracts from the content (and would probably be hard to read compared to actual skin tones).
The situation was, people chose yellow as the default, and that excluded some people. So, if we cared about being polite and fixing it for those people, and if our options were to either change to some hideous magenta that couldn’t be misinterpreted as representing a real skin tone vs just offering more skin tones, I think we made the right choice.
The choice is not dark magenta or bright yellow or bust though. A large spectrum of colors exist, and if we really wanted to not offend anyone, we could have chosen blue or green or pink or orange or any other color that couldn't possibly be a skin color (untill we meet easily-offended aliens of course).
The Android blob emojis worked for years and people were happy with them. They were so popular that some people even backported them to newer Android versions, after they were removed.
IMHO This: :-) is an emoji.
These new-fangled things on our phones are tiny pictures.
As pictures they communicate differently than ascii characters because they are a different medium.
yeah it really bugs me when ascii faces like :-) are auto converted into a emojii/emoticon by messaging apps or text editors. but that is another conversation
This is why I've always preferred the unifont interpretation of emojis: just monochrome graphics that get rendered with the same color as the surrounding text.
I perceive the cartoon yellow emojis to be white, an alternative interpretation never occurred to me at all.
The first time a black coworker gave a black thumbs-up reaction on slack, I noticed I didn't want to +1 it. I didn't identify with it, it didn't feel like it was coming from me.
This was a strong reaction and totally unexpected, and it was a "holy shit" moment as well, because I suddenly imagined how excluded I would have felt if that had been the only option for years.
I've found myself using the gender neutral reactions instead of the gendered versions despite not identifying with them as much just so my colleagues don't have to choose between incrementing an emoji that doesn't represent them and highlighting that they're different by adding their own gendered reaction.
But it'd be nice to not have to think about it the first place.
There’s a lot wrapped into this comment. Did you perceive yellow to be white because it is the default and you are white? I say that because of your realization you had. I assume that some people felt excluded because of their preconceived notion that the Simpsons are white (with good reason) but also that others (perhaps younger people who may not have seen the show) would follow the same default->my skin color connection.
> The first time a black coworker gave a black thumbs-up reaction on slack, I noticed I didn't want to +1 it. I didn't identify with it, it didn't feel like it was coming from me.
Why wouldn’t you identify with a +1 from a black (or other race/ethnicity) colleague?
The question is a bit aggressive, but if possible don’t consider it like that — I live in an (unfortunately rather conservative) part of the EU and TBH I’m often surprised with the race/diversity activism. I usually support them, if nothing else then because I’m clearly ignorant and not affected by the challenges some of my coworkers have to put on with.
Don’t think GP is having an issue with a +1 from a black coworker, rather that the coworker had reacted in slack using a black thumbs up.
So GP didn’t want to click the black thumbs up to react using the same emoji, because GP didn’t think that a black thumbs up represented him, and would rather react with a yellow or white thumbs up.
GP is then just saying that non-white coworkers probably feel the same about the yellow thumbs up emoji.
Ultimately using emoji is about expressing oneself, and skin colour is a big part of peoples identity (for better or worse). So it makes sense that they want their expressions using emoji to represent their identity.
When using emojis to convey their emotions, some people prefer their emojis to match what they look like. It's not a big deal - certainly not worth complaining about a feature that makes some people happier. The impact of online avatars on self-perception and outcomes is an interesting topic that's worth looking into (it's not limited to race).
But more importantly, why shouldn't a black person be able to use a black emoji? We have the technology.
I agree completely - why not let folks have emojis that more accurately reflect them?
That said, I agree with the GP, who the hell says "I don't approve of unnecessarily gendered emoji"? I mean, fine, then don't use them.
Or other commenters that felt uncomfortable plus-oneing emojis that didn't match their skin tone. Really?? I upvote these things all the time without a second thought because it just means I agree with you, not that we're the same shade. I think it's kind of sad when literally every mundane action, even something as trivial as upvoting someone's comment, can only be seen through the prism of race first and foremost.
The reason is because "woke" is racism in reverse.
As long as there's racism (in any direction), color matters. You can't treat or think of people differently on the basis of race without knowing who is in what race.
The last thing "woke" people want is for discrimination on the basis of race to disappear, or for the color of people's skin to no longer factor in to how they are judged or treated.
Edit: agreed with a below commenter, and thanks for the correction. There isn't any such thing as "racism in reverse", just racism.
Here's Christopher Hitchens in his 2001 book, Letters to a Young Contrarian:
>Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political". It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities". This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance.
Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.
I miss Christopher Hitchens' way with words. He truly had a talent for expressing himself richly and convincingly. The ultimate irony is he deconverted me from the religion of my childhood posthumously because I saw the news of his death and then googled him. Which lead to a fascinating summer of YouTube videos of debates and conversations.
Agreed. I've listened to and enjoyed several of his debates (as a Christian, no less) and mourn the loss of him.
He was a formidable and worthy opponent on the debate stage, and by all accounts one of the most kind, thoughtful, personable, and affable people off the stage.
I think it's OK for people to like things that resemble themselves. We will probably end up with emojis that reflect a variety of different body shapes and so on too.
"Simpsons yellow" actually represents white people on the actual Simpsons TV show. The other characters who represent the non-white population all have different skin colors that line up with the people of those cultures or races. So even though nobody's actual skin color is Simpons yellow, culturally we already were representing white skin as that color.
True, I must confess to only having watched one whole episode of the Simpsons start to finish, as the humor never seemed to click for me. I always much preferred Futurama.
The original smiley face was yellow because it was drawn on yellow paper, chosen because the task was to make a logo to cheer people up and yellow was “sunshiny and bright”. The colour has nothing to do with skin tone.
I have a fun conspiracy theory that the variety of emojis is a subtle plot to increase the barrier to entry against smaller companies. Now they have to invest in a much larger number of graphics to create unique set, which encourages them to use something off-the-shelf and brandless.
Am I misremembering? I coulda sworn that originally the 'white' (realistic, non-yellow) emojis were the only option, and the "neutral" yellow tone was added at the same time as the more diverse set of realistic skin tones. I'm certain that's how it was in Slack, for example - I remember discussing it with people at the time. Was I hallucinating?
I think if you are using Slack as an example of how emojis or emoticons were rendered "originally" then you are off by at least a decade. Maybe there were some platfroms/applications that used caucasian skin tones in their emojis, but that was definitely not the rule.
Not angry, exhausted. Tired of everything becoming new theater in the culture war. Tired of things that were intrinsically neutral and apolitical before are being changed for no reason other than to make it another battleground.
perhaps its better that no one can see the skin tone of any of commenters because then comments have to be judge on the merits of their arguments rather than melanin concentration in the skin of the people saying them.
I think what people are getting at with this (and trying to be cordial about it as best they can) is that the only people that want to have a separate image for every color person on the planet are racists.
Step back, take a deep breath and read what you wrote.
You are saying that we should not care, but you clearly care if the face is black ... So, somebody decided that he would like to have a black emoji because he like it that and you decided to make an issue out of it ... and accuse the other person of what you yourself are doing ...
If you don't see it is because you don't want to see it.
"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"
I am not upset that there is black, i am bothered that something that was implicitly neutral is not neutral anymore. that it can now be used as yet another point in which to divide than unify.
If you've watched the Simpsons, the "Simpsons Yellow" is white, it is clearly demonstrated in the show - Apu isn't yellow! It undermines your whole point!
