When you’re a company the size of Apple, sometimes you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Having recently paved the way for racially diverse emoji by adding them to both Mac and iOS, Apple is now being attacked for the shade of yellow used for its Asian faces, which some critics claim is borderline racist.
“Are we really that yellow?” wrote one user on Chinese microblogging site Weibo. “Asian skin tone in the new Apple emoji set is bright yellow,” writes a Mumbai-based user on Twitter. “That seems more racist than racially diverse.”
“Apple rolling out new racially diverse emoji! Not sure how I’m feeling about these ultra-yellow Asian emoji tho,” writes another Twitter user of Asian descent.
While it appears to be a minority of users, the news has still been enough to stir up some big media outlets, such as The Daily Mail, which responded with an article entitled, “Asians angered by Apple’s ‘racist’ yellow emoji.”
But, as with so many Apple-related storms in a teacup, things aren’t quite what they seem. For one thing, the colors are based on guidelines from the Unicode Consortium, which sets international rules for text and characters for consistency across all mobile platforms.
For another, the yellow color is the default standard race-neutral option, with a color modifier then allowing you to choose between different racial representations. (In other words, think LEGO yellow!)
Ultimately, the perceived problem comes down to a teething issue raised by incorporating ideas like diversity into the abstract world of emojis. Yellow smiley faces have been used since the 1960s (at least!), when Harvey Ball designed his iconic yellow smiley face while working for a Massachusetts insurance firm. It’s only when you start trying to make emojis reflect “real life” that implications of color are raised.
That doesn’t mean that Apple won’t make a change if enough fuss is kicked up, however. Having been outspoken about the fact that China will one day be Apple’s biggest market, the company is obviously sensitive to what users there think. If enough noise is made, I wouldn’t be surprised to see yellow emojis dropped from future Apple releases.
If you ask me, however, it’s a total case of misunderstanding.
Source: Japan Times
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
21 responses to “Why Apple’s new emojis aren’t racist”
People need to chill on the whole everything is racist attitude. I am African American and when Obama got elected and everyone was so up in arms about the Whitehouse Watermelon picture, I laughed my ass off. If I was Obama I would have made damned sure Michelle planted a few of them in her WH garden just for Ghits & Siggles.
Seems like people are looking for a cause in everything these days.
Don’t forget the fried chicken either. She should have served that at a important State Dinner, just to the tea-party rethugs in a tizzy. :-)
I used to travel in China quite a bit for work. There is a KFC every few blocks in some cities. We had some of the guys over here for training and every day when we asked them what they wanted for lunch it was KFC, KFC. It was so weird.
Just like Subway subs on almost every street corner in Montreal.
Oh ffs, that’s not the asian emoji, it’s the default yellow one that the world uses. The skin tones are customisable if you tap and hold.
lol, apple should add a chinky eyed emoji
Who assumed that the yellow was for Chinese people? Maybe those are the racist ones…
“Are we really that yellow?” wrote one user on Chinese microblogging site Weibo.
How did he know which ones were “Asian”?!
I think there is a generation that finds it hard to appreciate what it took actually affect just real change from previous ways. They are used to things changing in the ‘right direction’ and now what seems to be contentious is not change itself, but ‘how fast’ things can/do change. I hate to be the old guy calling some ‘spoiled’ but it does seem to fit…
Says the white guy. If you are trying to get more diverse you should do it right in the first place.
Awesome, another white person saying something isn’t racist. Not for you (or me) to determine, buddy.
I think the main point should be that Apple doesn’t control this.
This whole racial diverse emoji thing is ridiculous anyway and never should’ve been done. Not only do now have to MORE useless emojis to scroll through, but there was never an uprising about emojis just being non-realistic yellow happy faces or white people. As far as this controversy, asians look a lot more like the white people emoji skin tones than anything. Easy solution: scrap the racist emojis. This is a solution in search of a problem.
Could have avoided this whole mess if they didn’t do any emoji’s that looked like real people. That being said, glad I’m not the only one who thought, “Wow, that’s a little too yellow for those of ‘Asian’ descent.”
People like to complain about anything these days. Did they forget that the standard faces on the first page are all yellow to be universal, ie LEGOs or The Simpsons. Apple of all companies would not want to burn bridges with China and the rest of Asia. Quit reading more than is there. Heck who’s next to complain: the people who are red headed or albino?
Complaining about complaining… Haha
Asians have been using emoji for decades.
They were fine with the white skin color.
Enter political correctness and diversity the American way….
It’s not what you or I regard as racist for another race, if something makes a particular race feel stigmatized: it’s racist.
I’m sympathetic to the position, but it’s more complex than that! By that standard, we’d eliminate well-researched sociological, legal, and historical analyses by *whites* that reveal racist and discriminatory practices.
People do not have to be Native American, e.g., to understand that the name “Redskins” is historically racist and should NOT be used by the Washington team!
Plus, perceptions do not equal reality. What if some of the group label a practice racist and others do not? What if the actions are fair and neutral, but perceived as racist? That doesn’t make them, necessarily, racist.
Imagine the uproar if there was no yellow one … yea, aren;t ALL the emjoi yellow now?