POLL: Emojis & Skin Color (Hear me out...🫣) · R.I.S.E. and Shine Collective

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POLL: Emojis & Skin Color (Hear me out...🫣)

OK, so I've been holding off from bringing up this topic here for a while because I know there are soooooo many more important topics and conversations about race we could be talking about here.

But I realized I may not be the only one holding back from asking certain silly-feeling & -sounding questions or starting conversations about more minor, everyday things in this safe community of incredibly smart, strong, and empathetic people.

So I'm going to try to make a concerted effort going forward to start posting questions that are on my mind and heart, even when something is holding me back (mostly that I feel dumb), and worry less about how y'all might view/judge me to focus instead on what I (and maybe somebody else) could learn from sparking a discussion.

OK, so here's today's question.... 😅

I've always defaulted to using the yellow ones and never gave it much thought until I started hearing more murmurs about why some folks find that problematic.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-skin-tone-colors

But because I help manage several online communities that are led by Black business owners, whose members lean non-white, I've been thinking/worrying a lot about this whenever I use emojis (which is kind of often. And I'd like to keep doing so. 🤣)

I'm curious what you think about the potential effects of defaulting to using something that is meant to represent neutrality, because it's the simplest/safest thing to do.

Do you have an opinion/thoughts on which skin color you use for texts, posts, etc. that you wouldn't mind sharing?

I think it's complicated -- I'll share my thoughts in the comments.

I have a strong opinion about this that I'll share in the comments.

I've never heard nor thought about this.

9 votes

38 comments