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account42 3 days ago

The trap is thinking that because some creative works have made the mistake of assigning realistic skin tones to some characters based on race that we now need to repeat the same instead of learning from it.

jameshart 2 days ago | parent [-]

Ah - I’m not actually making an argument on the subject of whether adding skin tone emojis is a good idea. I’m just saying that, once they exist, white people getting upset about it and refusing to switch away from yellow is a weird hill to die on.

zahlman 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I’m just saying that, once they exist, white people getting upset about it and refusing to switch away from yellow is a weird hill to die on.

It isn't, because they know they won't be treated fairly if they do. This is why you can immerse yourself in a context where the large majority of people are white, but see brown and black skin tone emoji vastly more often than you see white skin tone emoji. And describing this reluctance to use the white emoji as "getting upset" is a part of the same memeplex that discourages them from taking part in the first place. Someone can argue that you, as a white person, are wrong no matter what you do (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-emoji-skin-tone-you-choo... — and please note how condescending and unhelpful the conclusion is, and the frankly antagonistic worldview it presents), but at least by sticking with the default you can say that you didn't put conscious effort into being wrong.

But even beyond that, the so-called "colour-blindness" is supposed to be a core liberal value, and I'm not giving it up. If I am called racist for doing what I used to be counseled to do so as not to be racist, then I am being abused.

AlexeyBelov a day ago | parent [-]

Can you support your statement that this particular kind of color blindness is a core liberal value?

zahlman 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't understand the request. There are no "particular kinds" of colour blindness in play here; in context, the term refers to one clearly defined concept — i.e., not taking race into consideration when making decisions about how to treat people. That this is a core liberal value is so self-evident that I can't fathom why support would be necessary. But try considering it from the perspective of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, for example.

BeFlatXIII 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Why change to accommodate a bunch of personal preferences?