I’m asking because as a light-skinned male, I always use the standard Simpsons yellow. I don’t really see other light-skinned people using an emoji that matches their skin tone, but often do see people of color use them. Maybe white people don’t naturally realize a need to be explicit with emoji skin-tone or perhaps it’s seen as implicitly identifying or requesting white privilege.
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Is there a significance to using skin-tone emojis, and if so, what is it?
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Assuming there might be a racial movement attached to the first question, how does my use of emojis, both Simpsons yellow and light-skin, interact with or contribute to that?
Note: I am an autistic white Latino-American cis-gendered man that aims to be socially just.
Autistic text stim: blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 blekh 😝 !!
But emoji’s are not derived from the Simpsons. They’re derived from the yellow smiley face ideogram that originated in the 1960s, it was designed by the artist Harvey Ball.
It’s yellow, not because it’s supposed to represent whiteness, but because the company colors of the State Mutual Life Assurance Company it was designed for were yellow and black, and because it feels sunny, bright and positive. It’s an anthropomorphized representation of the Sun, and does not represent a human with a specific skin color.
I neither said nor implied they were.
My point is that everyone, who is being honest at least, interprets the Simpsons as being white. Do you think they’re white?
Groeing chose yellow because it jumps out, but the characters are all supposed to be white. He could have chosen other colors that pop as well, but settled on yellow, for white people.
As I said, it’s no surprise the default emoji is closest to white skin. Even if that association comes from the Simpsons, emojis didn’t come out until decades after the Simpsons became a cultural mainstay.
My point is that everyone, who is being honest at least, interprets the Simpsons as being white. Do you think they’re white?
Yes, from the context it’s crystal clear that they’re white, they could be purple or green and they’d still be “white”, but I think it’s not relevant in a discussion about emojis.
As I said, it’s no surprise the default emoji is closest to white skin. Even if that association comes from the Simpsons, emojis didn’t come out until decades after the Simpsons became a cultural mainstay.
My point is that yellow smiley faces have been a cultural mainstay independent of the Simpsons, and that you grossly overestimate the worldwide cultural impact of the Simpsons. Most of the non-US world didn’t even get the Simpsons on TV until the mid 1990s, while smiley face t-shirts and pins were all the rage in the late 1980s and 1990s. Source: I wore them myself when I was a kid, and from your comment I’m guessing you weren’t born yet.
And decades? The Simpsons started in 1989, while the first instant messengers already had smiley face emoticons in the mid 90s.
Yes, I think they’re white but I think it’s not relevant in a discussion about emojis.
If we are talking about “why are there different skin tone emojis” it’s absolutely relevant to point out examples of how the alleged “neutral” emoji color is typically interpreted as a white skin tone.
Most of the non-US world didn’t even get the Simpsons on TV until the mid 1990s
The Simpsons came out in 88. You are saying most of the world got the Simpsons about half a decade later. I would say this proves the exact opposite of your point and that it is a huge world cultural phenomena. I’m shocked that I’m having the defend the Simpsons as one of the most important and impactful TV shows of all time.
And decades? The Simpsons started in 1989, while the first instant messengers already had smiley face emoticons in the mid 90s.
Emoticon != emoji. Characters don’t have skin tone colors. The first emojis didn’t come out until 1999. It wasn’t until mid 2000s when they gained popularity world wide, and it wasn’t until 2010 that they were accepted into unicode. It may be a fair point to claim that decades is too long, but it’s at least a decade.
Source: I wore them myself when I was a kid, and from your comment I’m guessing you weren’t born yet.
I was born in 1978. I remember the smiley face pins being a quick passing fad, not some mainstay. Certainly not even remotely on the level of the Simpsons. But regardless of how popular they are, it doesn’t detract from my point: the yellow is close to white and interpreted as white. It might even further drive home my point because (although it’s a bit circular here) probably part of the reason it gained such widespread financial success is because of it’s proximity to whiteness.
