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 😝 !!
Is it considered poor taste to use darker emoji colors if you are white?
Like emoji blackface?
In one app I’m a girl with medium skin tone and dark hair. In another I’m a pale boy with red blond hair. No idea how either one was chosen.
Intentions matter in these questions. You’ll know it when you see it if it is in bad taste.
Only if you are using them to convey some kind of racist message or pretending to be someone of color.
Without necessarily offering an opinion myself, there’s absolutely a chance someone views it as being in poor taste, thus at the least I would avoid doing it outside of conversations with those you know well.
Other responses are kind of fence-sitting so I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say yeah it’s poor taste, but forgiveable. I think it just boils down to why would you use a skin tone that’s not yours? Some people like having an emoji that’s they share with others of their color, so why intrude on that?