For most people, their choice of emojis and color is probably just a way to have fun communicating with friends, family, and co-workers.
But according to a story by NPR published on Wednesday, if you are white, your decision not to use a white emoji could be a sign that you “lack of awareness about white privilege.”
Come again?
Some white people may choose 👍 because it feels neutral — but some academics argue opting out of 👍🏻 signals a lack of awareness about white privilege, akin to society associating whiteness with being raceless.https://t.co/9g3rochT0K
— NPR (@NPR) February 9, 2022
The outlet notes that in 2015, the options for emojis expanded from just the “default Simpsons-like yellow” color to include five skin new tones for hand gestures.
But the new options, according to NPR, could say a lot about you.
Sarai Cole, an opera singer in Germany, told NPR that she chooses a brown skin tone for her emojis because “that matches me.” But she has friends “who use the brown ones, too, but they are not brown themselves,” and “this confuses me.”
“She said that while she was not offended when a non-brown friend used a dark emoji, she would like to understand why,” the story continued.
Cole added, “I think it would be nice if it is their default, but if they’re just using it with me or other brown people, I would want to look into that deeper and know why they’re doing that.”
You may think you are safe if you decide to skip the effort of changing the skin color of your emojis and just stick with the generic yellow color. Perhaps you “don’t want to assert” your “privilege by adding a light-skinned emoji to a text, or to take advantage of something that was created to represent diversity.”
However, academics say you’re wrong.
Zara Rahman, a researcher in Berlin, Germany, believes that “the skin tone emojis make white people confront their race as people of color often have to do.”
“One friend who is white told me that it was because he felt that white people were overrepresented in the space that he was using the emoji, so he wanted to kind of try and even the playing field,” Rahman told NPR. “For me, it does signal a kind of a lack of awareness of your white privilege in many ways.”
Additionally, Rahman says that yellow-colored emojis are not neutral because they give “white people an option to make their race explicit.”
The story was roundly mocked on Twitter by conservative and liberal commentators:
The planet is burning up, dictators are looking to invade their democratic neighbors, our education system is a complete disaster, and we’re obsessing over… emojis?! 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/zXJxQqgtX0
— @jason (@Jason) February 10, 2022
If everything is racist, nothing is racist.
— Fr Calvin Robinson 🏴 (@calvinrobinson) February 10, 2022
Bored academics are clearly *looking* for problems here.
This ridiculousness, unfortunately, undermines genuine cases of racism that need addressing.
The amount of anti-white rhetoric coming out of academia is quite telling. 👎🏻👎🏿👎 https://t.co/kgU8l55Lp5
I'm on a nationwide search for the person who didn't hate the existence of this article. There has to be one. https://t.co/gTYMrHQJOf
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) February 10, 2022
This is the dumbest thing I have read all day. Defund NPR. https://t.co/8LrxaQTSRm
— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) February 10, 2022
https://twitter.com/SharylAttkisson/status/1491639820476567554
Wouldn't it be easier to just say everything white people think and do is racist? https://t.co/caTVJKqcvV
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) February 10, 2022
Trust the Science and listen to the experts https://t.co/bWYCah6NfT
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 10, 2022
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/1491584345013903367
Is this real life? https://t.co/mgxaQyiMwu
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) February 10, 2022
https://twitter.com/NellieBowles/status/1491569715180761088
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1491617077135872006
The yellow emoji are supposed to be neutral?
— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) February 9, 2022
I've been using them because I thought they were for Asians ✌️ https://t.co/OTZkypUeSU
Shorter answer: it doesn't matter. Who cares. Use whatever emoji you want. I've never met a single brown person who cares what emojis white people use when talking to us. In fact, I literally never thought about it before this very second. https://t.co/mwmZSUSmiC
— Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid) February 9, 2022
NPR’s audience is 84% white. For comparison, that’s a greater share than Fox News, which NPR considers a white supremacist organization. Fox News has a significantly larger black and a much larger Hispanic audience than NPR has, both overall and as a percentage of viewers. https://t.co/Q7mbuUOC3S
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) February 9, 2022
Holy mother of god. https://t.co/rbJLh8QwPu
— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) February 10, 2022
<race neutral eye roll emoji> https://t.co/6PSQ5CUlUm
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) February 10, 2022
If you saw the story and thought it was a little outlandish, you can feel comfortable knowing that commentators all across the spectrum, from MSNBC’s Joy Reid to conservatives, felt the same way.
Go ahead, enjoy emojis and use white, yellow, or whatever color you want while you send your friends that pregnant man emoji — or not. They’re digital hands and faces meant to add a little fun to our digital conversations. They shouldn’t be taken that seriously.
