Is there any significance to people using emojis that match their skin tone?

HottieAutie@lemmy.dbzer0.com to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 147 points –

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.

  • Is there a significance to using skin-tone emojis, and if so, what is it?

  • 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 😝 !!

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Simpsons yellow. Not white?

Who talks about fictive yellow people?

People honestly assessing whether yellow is adjacent to whiteness.

Now please answer my question.

Simpsons yellow, not white.

All of the white guests are also yellow. Still claiming they aren't supposed to be white?

What are you talking about? I don't know simpsons well. What white guests?

They often have cameos on the show by famous people. The white people are always yellow. Yellow = white in the Simpsons, very clearly.

Ok, cool. But we talked about unicode smileys.

Understood. And I'm pointing out an example that makes it obvious how yellow is clearly white adjacent.

In a fictive show. Except if you're arguing that Simpsons is part of US culture. But Unicode is international.

I understand that it's fiction. But they choose yellow for white people because it's white adjacent, and it stands out. No one is confused that these are white people. No one watches the Simpsons and is honesty confused as to what race they are supposed to be.