As you all might have heard, Apple announced its project that will feature more options of emoji for its users on its latest upgrade. I use emoji very often when texting friends and family. It is a fun way to express our feelings or to identify a subject with just one click of a cute little icon, instead of typing words and sentences.
For Apple’s new project, instead of having the usual emoji icons, which consist of human faces with one skin color, Apple is bringing multiracial icons to its new upgrade.
As Apple is planning to bring out more icons of people with different races, they are aiming to promote and increase its diversity. Am I the only one feeling something is wrong?
As a person of a diverse background, I really appreciate Apple’s effort in making this step. But I cannot help but think whether or not this is the right way to identify people of different races. Even though the intentions behind establishing more options for iPhone users when picking Emoji icons are good, this creates a bigger problem of defining racial statuses.
The new icons that Apple is planning to bring out consist of six different skin colors that include black and yellow, and there are also a few different hair colors as well. This idea does indeed create more options for any users who utilize emoji in their conversations. But it is certainly not the ideal way to identify people of different races.
Even though we can now choose emoji other than the usual “white” icons, we can only choose an icon that has a closer skin color to our subject. We can never really find an icon that has the exact same color as the subject we are identifying. No one fits perfectly with any of the skin colors on the new icons, and we cannot identify a person exactly right with only just an Emoji icon.
More importantly, shouldn’t this idea of having more emoji options be a generic and neutral choice? As I am looking at the icon with the “yellow” skin color, I can feel the fingers pointing at myself, and all the other people with an Asian background.
However, that icon definitely does not represent us and Asians should not be identified with that “yellow” icon. Not only does the “yellow” icon not fit the skin color of Asians, the icon is not even neutral. I am also skeptical about the other icons with different skin colors. Nobody can really fit in any of the color of the new emoji. Instead of making the emoji more diverse and neutral, I think the icons are made less inclusive in a way.
I can only give credit for Apple’s efforts in trying to increase its diversity, but I think there are areas where it definitely has to improve, especially thinking about how we identify people with different racial backgrounds. I guess we can only know when the company finally carries out these new emoji.
