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Looking For a Fresh Face
There is a huge gap between the racial diversity of our world and those represented in the digital world.

By Megan Berberich

 
Emojis are a big part of Joey Parker’s life. He is constantly on his iPhone, answering emails, texting or surfing the web like most of the millions of other Millennials.

“I use [emojis] in literally every text, and it’s a great way to express yourself,” said Parker, a contributing writer for MTV Act and author of The Joey Parker Movement.

But opening up the emoji keyboard leaves something to be desired. Of the thousands of icons to choose from, few represent people of an ethnic minority. Only two emojis represent people of color: “man with a turban” and “man with a gua pi mao” or special beanie cap. And it wasn’t until 2012 that a lesbian and gay couple were added to the stock.

Emojis have been around since the ‘90s, first becoming popular among Japanese teenagers. They gained worldwide popularity when Apple added them to its iOS native keyboard in 2011.

One reason Apple doesn’t have any black emoticons is because it takes time to get them approved. It takes several years for the Unicode consortium, the nonprofit responsible for standardizing symbols across the web, to revise emojis in its database.

The tech industry has struggled with gender and racial diversity. This lack of diversity is most attributed to companies and developers consistently leaving out minorities when launching products. Unfortunately, little effort has been made to make emojis more diverse. But now people are starting to notice.

“Baby Daddy” star Tahj Mowry tweeted, “It makes me mad that there are no black emojis … ” last month. Miley Cyrus created a hashtag #EmojiEthnicityUpdate that has kept a dialogue going about the topic over social media since she tweeted, “RT if you think there needs to be an #EmojiEthinicityUpdate,” in December 2012.

The lack of diversity upset Parker, too, but instead of tweeting about it, he decided to go straight to Apple. Within a day, Parker and MTV received a reply from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

While Cook agreed with Parker — there needs to be more diversity in the next set of emojis — he did not release a timeframe for the next update. The new iOS 7 release date is set for fall 2014. Supporters of the emoji updates hope it will happen with iOS 7.

A Step Forward

Tech giants like Apple aren’t aren’t completely to blame for the slow rate of change.

The lack of ethnic diversity shines light on larger issues within our culture. Parker believes implementing a more diverse set of emojis embraces a collective whole, rather than just selecting one group.

“With so many young teens merging into the tech world and relying on cellphones, it’s important to begin to introduce a sense of equality at a young age,” Parker said.

Just last month, Oju Africa introduced the world to the first African emoticons. “Oju” means “faces” in the Yoruba language, native to Nigeria. Oju Africa is powered by Mi-Fone, the first African mobile-device brand.

These emojis were launched shortly after Mowry’s tweet and other discussions surrounding the hashtag, #EmojiEthnicityUpdate on Twitter in early April. Oju Africa addresses the need for a more diverse range of emoticons than what Apple or other companies currently offer.

Matthew Johnson, the director for MediaSmarts, Canada’s center for digital media literacy says we’re not necessarily seeing a ton of negative depictions of certain ethnic groups, but particular groups are being underrepresented frequently. Underrepresentation has a negative impact on people, particularly younger folks of our generation.

“It contributes to the perception which we all adopt unconsciously that ‘white is normal,’” Johnson said. “The baseline is white and all other groups are different rather than seeing each group as equal.”

Johnson explained that the lack of diversity in emojis is similar to the lack of diversity in video games. This has occurred for multiple decades. The majority of video game avatars are white and male.

“Players who are not white and male have to essentially leave some of their self behind and take on this white/male identity in order to participate in the game,” Johnson said.

Like with video game avatars, minorities who want to use emojis often can’t accurately represent themselves if the avatars are only represented as white.

More broadly, being white has become synonymous with being normal.

“At an individual level, it forces people who are not white to represent themselves as white if they want to communicate in this medium,” Johnson said. “At a societal level, it perpetuates the notion that ‘white’ is the baseline.”

For Parker, this lack of diversity can be dangerous.

“Although many may not claim, it’s a big deal, it is to me,” Parker said. “We have come so far with racism, but often we see instances of it in our society.”

While emojis may seem like a relatively trivial issue, more diverse representation could make a huge difference. They are deeply tied to how people see the world and express themselves.

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Photo courtesy of The All Nite Images

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