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| ▲ | rmunn 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | So when white people have emojis available that more accurately reflect their skin tone than the neutral-yellow one, and yet they prefer to use the one that DOESN'T reflect their skin tone nearly as well, to me that's pretty strong evidence that it is racially neutral, at least in their perception. And really, when you're talking about perceived racial overtones of emojis, "in their perception" is what matters, isn't it? There's no objective, 2+2=4 truth that we can point to in this particular argument, as there is in some arguments, because it's all about what subtext different people are reading into things. The objective truth is that those pixels are a certain color; the perception of them is subjective, varying from person to person. And while some people prefer to use emojis that reflect their skin tone (whether it's lighter or darker), others prefer to use the yellow emojis instead of the ones that would better reflect their skin tone. The fact that they chose that color when they had other options available suggests strongly that they are trying to communicate a "skin tone doesn't matter in the context of this communication" message. You are arguing that the yellow color isn't inherently neutral, but I claim that you are making the perfect the enemy of the good. Even if the yellow color isn't inherently as neutral as it was intended to be, the fact that people are choosing it over colors that would more accurately reflect their skin tone means that it is neutral enough for the purpose. | |
| ▲ | zahlman 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Well now you’re bringing white supremacy into a conversation that is more about white defaultism.... And then it’s especially weird to continue to insist that it’s racially neutral in the face of the evidence that it really isn’t. When you put this much effort into saying "actually these things that don't literally resemble a white person's skin tone totally are intended to represent a white person's skin tone, because it's kinda vaguely similar; and for a long period of time you had people using the yellow to pretend to be inclusive but they really were just thinking of white people when they did it", it's hard to read that as anything other than "... and that's bad, and reflects a morally bad unconscious bias in favour of white people". > The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. 1. Why? 2. Why does the use of a smiley face to convey an emotion (no matter what colour it's drawn) have anything whatsoever to do with "identifying with" the face? What does it even mean to "identify with" a drawing? | |
| ▲ | adamrezich 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. A citation is needed for this extraordinary claim. | | |
| ▲ | jameshart 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there has actually been academic research done on the topic: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Bl... > The yellow emoji is not perceived as neutral by either Black or White readers. On average, both groups perceive it as more likely to index a White identity, and we find this effect to be stronger among White readers. | | |
| ▲ | adamrezich 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It shouldn't be a surprise that these would be the findings of post-hoc research done in 2021, long after skin-tone modifiers were made available and in common use, rather than research that was done before skin-tone modifiers were added to the standard, so as to justify the additional complexity and possible nth-order societal effects of adding them—which, as far as I can tell, does not exist. Instead, someone somewhere made the call that giving up the universality of cartoon yellow emoji was worth “making some people ‘feel more represented’”, even despite the numerous other tradeoffs and nth-order effects (no reddish Native American tone, added social complexity for biracial users (“am I ‘black enough’ to use the darkest one, in a given arbitrary social context?”), and so on), which people conveniently ignore. | |
| ▲ | throw0101d 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The linked paper is too involved for me to really parse/grok, but I'm curious to know if the study(s) cited occurred before or after the introduction of skin-toned variations. If there was only one colour available, and everyone knew there was only one option, would that lead people to think it was more neutral? Or, if the study(s) were post-variance introduction, people came to think the supposedly-neutral colour is 'actually' white. Did the introduction of variations also introduce the idea of non-neutrality? | | |
| ▲ | adamrezich 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The paper was written in 2021, the skin-tone modifiers were added in 2015. |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wonder if this could be solved by just making the default emoji green or blue or something. | | |
| ▲ | account42 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The advantage of a neutral color is that it can be whatever you want in your local theme. Back when they were images supplied by the respective forum/etc. instead of giant fonts that only mega-corporations can afford to maintain it was not uncommon to have emoticons styled and colored differently to match the site theme and/or subject matter instead of the standard yellow. | |
| ▲ | TheCycoONE 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Skeeter is blue but represents black; Ice king is blue but almost certainly white. I don't know where Megamind fits in; and the Smurfs are almost certainly 'other'. I think you're onto something. |
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