• AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      9 months ago

      I read an article which stated that by Apple introducing the colorized emoji, they actually increased racism. The author said that people feel awkward not using the different skin tones since they’re there, but by doing so they expose their race, which opens them up to racist attacks and makes them stand out of the group. I’d argue that it’s just exposing the racism that was already inherent in the community, but I didn’t write the article.

      • Ephera@lemmy.ml
        4·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. It could reduce racism by making people of color more visible. Most racists aren’t inherently pro-white, rather they’re picking some arbitrary criteria for us vs. the others. As a result, making it visible to them that their ‘us’ is lots of people of color, they’ll drop that nonsense criteria pretty quickly.

        But of course, chicken-egg and all that, people experiencing racism may not necessarily want to expose their race for the reasons you named, and so they don’t become collectively visible.

    • exocrinous@startrek.websiteEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      It’s all The Simpson’s fault. They shouldn’t have given people of colour human skin tones. Apu should be yellow.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      51·
      9 months ago

      My former boss always made sure we knew she was white when she used emojis. I’m like, lady- we all see you. Even the people who work remotely see you via Zoom meetings. You don’t need to let us know you’re white. Why are you making an effort?

    • moon@lemmy.ml
      21·
      9 months ago

      I think it’s weird not to use a skin colour emoji. An everyday form of prejudice is the assumption that white is the default. Black or brown is an exotic/diverse category. That other people have odd customs and social norms, but our customs and religions are normal.

      It’s even worse in design where the default human we design for is a man, hence women struggling with phone sizes that are too large for their hands. I think anything that helps break away from these default assumptions is good.

      We already know from the Simpsons that yellow is a stand-in for white so it’s not neutral. There’s a white skin colour emoji, and by not using it when black/brown people use the other emojis, you’re refusing to acknowledge that you too have a non-neutral, non-default skin colour.

      • Faresh@lemmy.mlEnglish
        61·
        9 months ago

        But I don’t want to choose my emojis based on the colour of my skin, I’d prefer to use something “neutral”, and while yellow as you said is not really neutral, it’s the closest thing we have to a neutral colour from all available options. I also don’t think unicode requires that the unmodified emoji be rendered as being yellow (correct me if I’m mistaken), and it’s probably apple and google who just decided that their fonts should render them as being yellow. I imagine one could with another font make them be magenta or some other color.

        • moon@lemmy.ml
          11·
          9 months ago

          I think it was a mistake to go with yellow in the first place and I see the case for changing it to magenta/green/anything.

          But I think when we’re representing people or human hands it’s necessary to allow for skin colour, and by not doing so we’re needlessly erasing people. I’m just not a fan of the ‘it’s racist to bring up race’ argument, which is not what you’re saying but the original comment was veering towards

    • blarth@thelemmy.club
      11·
      9 months ago

      I’ll be honest, anyone making judgements about skin color of emojis needs some real issues to focus on.

  • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
    231·
    9 months ago

    I’m already creeped out by the fleshtone emojis as they imply that Simpsons primary yellow is a normal colour of human skin.

    • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today
      375·
      9 months ago

      I thought the whole point of emojis being yellow in the beginning is to eliminate the hassle of making one for every skin tone.

      And then some assholes got offended by it and demand the exact opposite.

      • NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
        121·
        9 months ago

        Person 1 - “We want equal rights and protections for all people, fair wages, and the right to live healthy and happy without the threat of state sanctioned violence”

        Capitalism - “Sorry, best I can do is performative gestures with no real world impact.”

        Person 2 - “These got dam libs ruined my emojis!”

  • ris@feddit.de
    142·
    9 months ago

    Would fit into a Wolfenstein game. We in Germany have lampshade made out of human skin, in a concentation camp.

  • erp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    It’s good that this was done, otherwise people may believe that all basketballs are made by oompa-loompas.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
      12·
      9 months ago

      But why on earth is the basketball modifiable with the skin color? Are we going to do that with all emoji? Are we finally gonna have the 🍆 in all skin tones?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      6·
      9 months ago

      That’s not how it works. A user may add to the modifier character but they still need to be an actual image change to actually cause the character to do anything.

      It’s not a tint it’s actually a different image that’s being loaded.