Twitter Users And Meme Creators Did Not Agree With NPR's Hot Take On Emoji Skin Tones
Yesterday on Twitter, NPR tweeted a link to one of their most recent articles titled, "Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think." Over the course of the evening, the tweet amassed roughly 2,100 likes, but more notably, over 10,800 quote tweets filled with users posting memes and reacting to the polarizing take (another ratio for the books).
The article was published yesterday morning, written by three collaborating journalists. Within the piece, they outlined ethnographic evidence that alluded to who used what skin tone in relation to their own ethnicity. Overall, they questioned if the neutral, yellow skin tone was truly neutral, citing mix-raced people who felt the need to use the yellow tone because they still weren't represented by the five choices.
They even cited a Ph.D. candidate named Alexander Robertson in the article who they labeled as an "emoji researcher." He claimed that when the skin tones were introduced to iOS back in 2015, they were used in higher proportions by people with darker skin. White people, on the other hand, chose to stick with the yellow skin tone because "they don't want to assert their privilege by adding a light-skinned emoji to a text, or to take advantage of something that was created to represent diversity."
They spoke to another emoji researcher named Zara Rahman who further claimed, "Skin tone emojis make white people confront their race as people of color often have to do." They then used this as more evidence to build the argument that white people using the yellow emoji is an underlying symptom of them viewing themselves as "raceless."
The tweet and article were met with resistance from some almost immediately, getting ratioed in regards to the quote tweets outnumbering the likes by almost five times. Twitter users referenced multiple memes that ironically related to the PC take like Stolen Valor and Justin Trudeau's brownface controversy, among others.
Additionally, non-white Twitter users added to the discussion, relaying how they thought the article was overly sensitive. One user said they were "an Iranian-born refugee and naturalized American" who viewed the think-piece as "childishly woke." Another Twitter user identified a conflict in regards to the intention of the article, citing evidence that one of the authors was employed by a third-party, multi-million dollar HR/staffing firm.
One of the more noteworthy reactions, however, was when users recalled a Kanye West tweet from 2018 that made a joke about only using emojis that look like The Simpsons. It was the light at the end of the tunnel of the heated debate, which some labeled as a "step backward" for liberal media. Regardless, the article did share some interesting statistics about what groups use which emojis and unearthed a tension that apparently a lot of people were passionate about.
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blanisquid
whenever i see a person use a white skin emoji, it immediately rubs me the wrong way. the person had to intentionally go and change from the default to show everyone that they are white. usually i just take it as naivete of "they give me different options and i'm going to pick the most accurate option" but it just kinda has this unspoken message of "i want you to know that i am white". like why? maybe in a discussion of racial issues that's relevant, but at that point you can just use words. otherwise there's no reason to "assert your whiteness", so to speak.
whenever i see a person use a darker skin emoji, i think that they want to represent themselves in a world were they are often ignored or marginalized. there is a good reason to choose a non-default. there is no implication of supremacy.
whenever i see a person use a yellow emoji, i think it's the default option and think nothing more of it. all people of all ethnicities should be able to use it without judgment.
i get the argument that by only having non-white people use non-default emojis it paints whiteness as the default, but the white people that avoid the white emoji for the same reasons as me do it to avoid giving a racist message. if non-white communities do come in waves to say that it does not work as intended and does appear racist instead, then the behavior ought to be changed – but so far that is just not what i have seen.
*Name censored*
I don't often do, but I agree with Kanye here.
Electric Dictator Bedebao
Quite the contrary, using anything but yellow shows you are racist by giving undue importance to your skin tone.
IfYaDVote-ReplyToWhy
Can you elaborate?
Phhase
Yeah, no. Yellow smilely faces, yellow cartoon characters, there's nothing to do with race here. This is dumb. Move on.
DirkDiggums
This is the type of over thinking that makes people hate race politics. Yellow does not mean raceless, maybe blue or purple but yellow has been solidified in the common consciousness of Americans due to the Simpsons as white/asian.
Why are we writing articles on fucking emoji's in the first place, like a white guy using a brown thumbs up emoji and that's a great injustice? Like fuck off, there are real problems to solve all this over thinking hyper race focused shit will only make race more apparent in people's minds.
The left is too up their own ass these days to get any real shit done, we are arguing about emoji's while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but hey massive company X with record profits just tweeted out pro LGBT tweet so that's progress right?
lecorbak
"white people using the yellow emoji is an underlying symptom of them viewing themselves as "raceless.""
if you think there are different races of humans, then you are racist.
there is only one race, so you can definitively say that we are raceless.
IfYaDVote-ReplyToWhy
"I hate it when people say, 'I can't see color'. 'I can't see color, I can't see race!'. If you can't see race, you can't see racism. Then what good are you to me?"
~Hari Kondabolu
hexkeybushing
From a scientific viewpoint, there is no distinction between what we call races. And I see a lot of merit in trying your best to not be biased by a person's race. That doesn't mean you can't identify racism. The assumption that people who try not to be biased also ignore racism is a straw man argument based on an intentionally overly literal interpretation of the silly phrase "I can't see race".
I also find it odd that someone is "not useful" to you if they were hypothetically bad at identifying racism. Is the purpose of all white people to simply be servile security guards for non-white people? If someone who hates racism legitimately doesn't notice racism going on just point it out to them and help them learn.
IfYaDVote-ReplyToWhy
I don't think NPR's article is anything new. I remembered when I was exposed to academic studies on race in America, they commonly point out that many Americans have a default race we think of when we see the sentence, "You see a person in a suit walking down the street". When people were surveyed what race and sex they think the person they imagined was, the answers "white" and "male" dominated the board.
These discussions usually lead onto many other things. Like how most Americans of color do have that harsh memory in their life when they realize they aren't white. I definitely remember it pretty well in grade school when some kid told me to wash my dark skin because he said I looked dirty. They also point out how most white Americans think of race and ethnicity as the same, but for many POCs, there is a clear difference(i.e. Being Asian and Thai, being Hispanic and Honduran, being Native and Navajo, etc;).
It's part of the fault that America has historically favored white, heterosexual males that it has become normalized to think of it as the default. I remember seeing a Reddit post some time ago reach the front page where someone said they're going to assume everyone a white guy unless you say something otherwise. For many of us POCs, racial identities is one of those things we are commonly forced to confront because it's virtually impossible to avoid being subjected to.
Panuru
Okay, your emoji is Bart Simpson color, and what race is Bart Simpson?
DirkDiggums
white. Simpsons used yellow as white/asian, or lighter skin. It just pops more on screen thank pinkish white color used. The fact that Apu and Carl are not yellow shows that yes, the yellow emoji is meant to be white/asian.
Panuru
Exactly. And this was pointed out in the NPR piece – nonwhite people in The Simpsons have non-yellow tones. The Simpsons yellow emoji is a white emoji.
NeatCrown
From what I remember, it depends. Sometimes, East Asians are given the same yellow as Caucasians, while other times they're given a pale yellow tone.
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Nox Lucis
>using emojis