Apple vows to add racially diverse EMOJIS after MILEY CYRUS TWITTER outrage Apple has vowed to tackle the lack of racial diversity in its emojis and will work with the Unicode Consortium to make the annoying little images more politically correct. MTV Act contacted Apple to ask them to make sure the emojis were more diverse. Currently, the human emojis are mostly pinkish. This will not do, roared MTV …
Can we make it an international effort so the rest of us can sign? I think it would be better to go through the IETF rather than working through they myriad bureaucracies of the UN and member states.
We got along just fine without the various flavors of :), ;(, :P and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when I was a kid... rods to the hogshead and all that.
Try to keep up here.
I had to look up "emoji" myself. Apparently, they're of Japanese origin (think smileys crossed with Hello Kitty). These are emoticons 3.0 -- and cover pretty much anything cute you might ever think of communicating. Especially things an 8 to 12 year old might think of.
Actually, *exclusively* things an 8 to 12 year old might think of.
Smiling Turd isn't my favorite, but it's right up there with Helpful Information Woman.
Android's default character set support is a robot pulling faces. This is humanist. We need to duplicate all robot faces with the exact same human faces and fill up more code points.
The race of the emoji depends on the font used to display the code point, not the code point itself. Apple could vary the emoji's race depending on the language or country.
That's an interesting one. The official description of that character is BLACK SMILING FACE, but BLACK doesn't actually mean "black" here; it means something like "solid" or "mostly foreground colour". So if you're using green text on an orange background then the face is mostly green. Some other characters from the same region are described as BLACK DIAMOND SUIT and BLACK CHESS PAWN. Again, BLACK means "solid" or "mostly foreground colour". The official PDF uses black text on a white background: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf
® is part of the enclosed alphanumerics block of Unicode. Very far from being an emoji.
Looking at the Unicode listing given in the link above:
1F638;GRINNING CAT FACE WITH SMILING EYES
1F639;CAT FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY
1F63A;SMILING CAT FACE WITH OPEN MOUTH
1F63B;SMILING CAT FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES
1F63C;CAT FACE WITH WRY SMILE
1F63D;KISSING CAT FACE WITH CLOSED EYES
1F63E;POUTING CAT FACE
1F63F;CRYING CAT FACE
1F640;WEARY CAT FACE
Judge for yourself, here's the Unicode reference for the "Emoticons" range - horrors, there is one.
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F600.pdf
Not seeing a lot of colour in those sample images, and not seeing a lot of racial profiling in the descriptions either - for example, U+1F60D is described as "FACE SAVOURING DELICIOUS FOOD", not "WHITE MALE FACE SAVOURING DELICIOUS AND INHERENTLY SUPERIOR NON-ASIAN FOOD AFTER CONQUERING AN INFERIOR PEOPLE AND TAKING THEIR OIL". Probably an emoticon you'd use a lot of.
Perhaps they're still smarting from having their Apple logo banished to the private use area, or worse.
Colour me U+1F632.
The original request is quite correct: Unicode does not specify color, which nobody complains about.
What they complain about is that Apple had to choose for its font actual pictures of hundreds of faces; and these faces just happen to be all white. It's not so surprising people are complaining. Nowadays, it's pretty rare to see an illustration of a dozen "generic people" that are all white.
Many other fonts skipped the problem by choosing non-realist colors, which is acceptable because they don't represent any race better than any other...
you forgot semi transparent ones for invisibles :)
anyway, you'd be surprised.. just because they aren't readily available in majority-white countries doens't mean that they don't exist :) google 'brown plasters'.
in fact, have a link :D
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fortuna-Assorted-Skin-Plasters-Dark/dp/B00ENF075Q
It is wonderful to think that there is nothing more important in the world than the alleged "colour" of a group of signals with arbitrary definitions.
So nice to know that the heavy issues of last millennium like world peace, hunger, misery and sickness have been purged and we can devote ourselves to the rest of the necessary steps in improving our world : making sure the racists are properly reassured about "diversity".
Noun: A Tweet: A weak chirping sound as of a small bird
Verb: Tweet: Make a weak, chirping sound
Twitter: A series of chirps ( short form Twit! : Someone who is regarded as contemptible)
The above according to Word Web, basically noises of little impact or import, which pretty much describes the tweeting crowd.
What we are really talking about is a load of vacuous, fluff for brains morons with so little to do that they have to invent shit like this to give their lives some meaning.
The emojis on my iPhone are yellowish, not pinkish. African Americans shouldn't complain any more than white people, as they resemble neither.
If anyone should be bothered it should be Asians, as it plays into the "yellow devil" stereotype. But AFAIK this stuff mostly originated in Japan, so... A lot of them have very "slanty" looking eyes, as a matter of fact. If Apple had designed these itself they'd probably (and rightly) be called racist!
What's scary is that Unicode is 32 bit, so they could add millions of these things to account for every possible skin tone if they try to please everyone. Hopefully Apple made the request to get them off their backs, knowing it will go nowhere.
These people today need to really think about priorities and realize that there are for more things that they could use their Twitter accounts to raise awareness for. I actually like the idea of a non-racially identified emoji, instead of multiple that are identified to specific races.
I want sort of olive/brown - I want bearded faces and non bearded and mustaches. While we are at it, how about a set of orthodox jewish ones (you know the ringlets & hat). Oo Oo also a full set ofniqab female faces - crying, smiling , surprised etc. Oo Oo what about sets of tattooed people as well for our Polynesian & Maori friends
Ah to think that I have been on this earth for nearly 55 years, and until today I had never heard of emojis.
By highlighting the fact that there is a difference in the colour of these "things" and saying it is a problem they are in fact making it racist. As people have previously said, the emothingies are what the average 8-13 year old would think up and use. However, most normal kids (ie: ones not raised to care about skin colour and instead to judge people on their character) would not see this as a problem.
By calling it out and saying how it is racist not to have these other colours they are in fact tainting any youths who don't even see this as an issue.
Won't someone think of the children!?!
This is so stupid, emoji's are more about the emotions they are expressing, not the representation of a race wtf??? They are yellow, the only race that represents are the white people in The Simpsons.
Never have I as a mixed race (jamaican, scottish) man had an issue with the colour of the emojis, and I have yet to hear about any black people i know or otherwise have a problem with this, people are just trying to be politically correct in areas it doesn't even matter or help anyone in any way - might want to deal with more severe racial issues in the world like racist activists (EDL, BNP, etc.), discrimination in the work place, at football matches, etc.
And since when did anyone care what Miley Cyrus has got to say?! She starts whinin and twerking and has a new found love for black music and d*** and now she is the is the voice for equality for black people? In iPhone messages!?! GTFOH
If they really do make black emojis, i want to see some brownish-beige ones or i'll kick off about the racial exclusion of me and my fellow hybrid brothers...
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