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.

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.

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?

I wonder if this could be solved by just making the default emoji green or blue or something.