Emojis – the tiny, illustrated pictures that can convey so many emotions nowadays, are finally getting a facelift (literally) from Apple.
We are all familiar with these emojis; the thumbs-up, fist bump, princess and the dancing lady-in-red-dress. We unashamedly use them often (or at least I do) and we also know that they are all white/caucasian.
This is exactly where the problem for Apple and the emoji makers came in – the colour of the emojis‘ skin, and understandably so.
The lack of racially diverse emojis has long since been a thorn in the side for Apple, with many people complaining about the lack of “˜coloured‘ emojis. Apple has addressed the issue numerous times in the past and last year, made a promise that they will work together with Unicode to create, and then implement, new, racially diverse emojis – and now the company has finally made good on their promise.
Apple rolled out a new beta version for OS X developers yesterday, and with it came the new, improved, all-race encompassing emojis.
With the roll out, when selecting a “˜human‘ emoji, users will now see a drop-down menu that will offer them a range of different skin colours for that specific emoji. There are now 6 different skin colours to choose from.
While these new diverse emojis are great, one thing that seems a little out of place is the (extremely) yellow skin colour option. One wonders if this is supposed to represent “˜Asians‘ and if so, if it is not a little stereotypical and, well, racist. Have a look and decide for yourself.
What‘s interesting about the new emojis is that the different skin colour option only applies to individual “˜human‘ emojis, and not “˜couple‘ or “˜group‘ emojis – so the two dancing girls or the couple kissing emoji will stay caucasian,
While these new emojis aren‘t perfect, they are a step in the right direction.
What do you think?
Source: Gizmodo
