![]() ![]() “If a white person wants to use a black thumbs up, more power to them,” she said. My mom, a black woman, told me she voted yes because she believes it shows solidarity. Then there’s the idea that white people can use the darker skin-tones in solidarity. May be too nuanced for most, but like, if I were talking about say, Prince, I might ☔️□□□□□□☔️ She said she does use darker skin-tone emoji but not in the first-person. Someone, whom I imagine voted yes on the poll, made an interesting distinction. He then added, “My blackness is not for your entertainment.” He then pointed to a Wikipedia page about minstrel shows, which entailed white people dressing up in blackface to negatively portray black people. Leslie Miley, an outspoken advocate for diversity in tech and racial justice in society at large, voted no. Some people went on to elaborate on their answers for me. Of the 239 people who voted, 54 percent said it’s not, 33 percent said yes and 13 percent said “only if they’re tan.” According to my Twitter poll, the answer is no. I simply asked them if it’s ok for white people to use emoji with darker skin-tones. The logical step, in my mind, was to get my co-workers and people on Twitter to chime in. I also came across some articles on the topic, but I still didn’t feel like I had a solid understanding of who was right and who was wrong. Some people accused her of cultural appropriation. In August, some people on social media called her out for using a fist bump emoji in a skin tone that was darker than her own. Upon my Googling, I came across an incident involving Kendall Jenner. Still feeling confused and unsettled about my friend’s emoji use, I figured there were only a couple of things to do: Googling the hell out of it came first. We’ve still been texting regularly but she hasn’t sent any emoji to me in a while. She heard where I was coming from but it’s unclear where she landed. In response, though, I said it felt uncomfortable to me because it seemed as if she was trying to claim something that wasn’t hers to claim. From what I could gather, she was hesitant to use the white emoji because it could come across as oppressive - as if she was shoving her whiteness at me. I heard her out, and understood her perspective. But her main reason was around the “weirdness” of using the white emoji. For one, she pointed to the fact that she’s tan. It’s true, she’s not as white as the white emoji. When she picked up the phone, I stumbled over my words for a bit before finally asking, “So……why do you use that color emoji?” Just so we’re on the same page, this was the exact emoji in question: (Yeah, I can be super dramatic sometimes). Unsure of how she was going to take my discomfort and skepticism, I was fearful this would be the last time we ever spoke. ![]() This felt like too sensitive of a matter to hash out over text.Īs the phone rang, my heart was racing and I felt pretty anxious. That’s when our conversation went from text to a good old-fashioned phone call. Turns out, as I originally thought, she’s white. So I asked her if she identifies as a person of color, to which she said no. Based on her use of emoji with non-white skin-tones, I wasn’t sure if she was a person of color whom I had wrongly been perceiving as white. I was texting with a friend who uses emoji with darker-colored skin-tones. ![]()
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