In a new beta version of its operating system, Apple recently revealed a new set of "racial diverse" emoji, featuring faces in a variety of skin tones. So I join the chorus and ask: what is up with that awful sickly shade of yellow? Is that supposed to be an Asian face? Because those faces do not look healthy.
These are Apple's new, diverse emoji
There's been a demand for more inclusive emoji that reflects the diversity of the world's skin tones. Or at least some options other than the limited set of lily-white icons currently featured in iOS. So I applaud the effort.
But dude. That yellow is gross.
The Unicode Consortium, which sets international rules for text and characters to insure consistency across platforms, is responsible for setting the six shades of emoji "skin" and apparently based on the Fitspatrick scale, a recognized classification system for human skin color used in dermatology.
Except that yellow. It's supposed to be the new "neutral" default color, which is apparently required by the Unicode specification to be "non-realistic." That shade of yellow certainly does not exist in human biology. That's the shade of hot dog mustard. It's the shade of The Simpsons.
Okay. So then which one is supposed to represent the Asian emoji face? Do not tell me the yellow.
More here: Here Are Apple's Diverse (And Racist? Jaundiced?) Emoji