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 😝 !!

  • brbpostingEnglish
    321·
    6 months ago

    My immediate opinion upon skin tone emoji being introduced was the mildest frustration: we’d had unified emoji for all Homo sapiens!

    Then after seeing someone use their own skin tone for an emoji, I realized… oh, dang. They can feel represented now, potentially in a way they did not before.

    I use yellow 100%. But not bad folks have options.

    One neat thing is on Slack you may be able to see a hint of your company’s vibrant diversity if folks are reacting with all colors of emoji. Admittedly it could also look a little cluttered though maybe they are grouping reactions by symbol now.

    On a related note, I’ve seen two people with very light (though non-white) skin tones use significantly darker skin tone emoji. One of those times I brought it up with someone else and they’re like “yeah what’s with that?!” Self image or eyesight related perhaps…