7mo ago

Is there any significance to people using emojis that match their skin tone?

I'm asking because as a light-skinned male, I always use the standard Simpsons yellow. I don't really see other light-skinned people using an emoji that matches their skin tone, but often do see people of color use them. Maybe white people don't naturally realize a need to be explicit with emoji skin-tone or perhaps it's seen as implicitly identifying or requesting white privilege.

Is there a significance to using skin-tone emojis, and if so, what is it?
Assuming there might be a racial movement attached to the first question, how does my use of emojis, both Simpsons yellow and light-skin, interact with or contribute to that?

Note: I am an autistic white Latino-American cis-gendered man that aims to be socially just.

Autistic text stim: blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 !!

You're viewing a single thread.

127 comments

Most white people expect peach color/white to be the universally accepted default and everyone should just not think about it because they themselves rarely have to think about representation.
White people in majority white countries rarely experience lack of representation so they don't think its a big deal.
If medium brown was the default lots of people would be losing their minds with rage and y'all know it.
- The emoji standard is bright yellow though, not peach or white.
  
  Universally accepted default for drawn or animated people in general, not emojis. Simpsons yellow is what they use for white people.
  
  Are there any non-Simpsons yellow animated people?
  
  On The Simpsons? Yeah, there are Black and brown characters.
  
  Nono, I mean in other animated series.
  
  Honestly not sure. I don't watch a whole lot of animation these days.
  
  That's not the point of the comment, and not even what they said
- What white. Default is yellow.
  
  White/peach is the universally accepted default for drawn or animated people in general, not emojis. Simpsons yellow is what they use for white people. It's still using white person color for the default.
  
  And a dog is a wolf.
  
  Simpsons yellow. Not white?
  
  Who talks about fictive yellow people?
  
  People honestly assessing whether yellow is adjacent to whiteness.
  Now please answer my question.
  
  Simpsons yellow, not white.
  
  All of the white guests are also yellow. Still claiming they aren't supposed to be white?
  
  What are you talking about? I don't know simpsons well. What white guests?
  
  They often have cameos on the show by famous people. The white people are always yellow. Yellow = white in the Simpsons, very clearly.
  
  Ok, cool. But we talked about unicode smileys.
  
  Understood. And I'm pointing out an example that makes it obvious how yellow is clearly white adjacent.

127 comments