Twitter Users And Meme Creators Did Not Agree With NPR's Hot Take On Emoji Skin Tones

Yesterday on Twitter, NPR tweeted a link to one of their most recent articles titled, "Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think." Over the course of the evening, the tweet amassed roughly 2,100 likes, but more notably, over 10,800 quote tweets filled with users posting memes and reacting to the polarizing take (another ratio for the books).

Some white people may choose 👍 because it feels neutral -- but some academics argue opting out of 👍🏻 signals a lack of awareness about white privilege, akin to society associating whiteness with being raceless.https://t.co/9g3rochT0K

— NPR (@NPR) February 9, 2022

The article was published yesterday morning, written by three collaborating journalists. Within the piece, they outlined ethnographic evidence that alluded to who used what skin tone in relation to their own ethnicity. Overall, they questioned if the neutral, yellow skin tone was truly neutral, citing mix-raced people who felt the need to use the yellow tone because they still weren't represented by the five choices.

They even cited a Ph.D. candidate named Alexander Robertson in the article who they labeled as an "emoji researcher." He claimed that when the skin tones were introduced to iOS back in 2015, they were used in higher proportions by people with darker skin. White people, on the other hand, chose to stick with the yellow skin tone because "they don't want to assert their privilege by adding a light-skinned emoji to a text, or to take advantage of something that was created to represent diversity."

They spoke to another emoji researcher named Zara Rahman who further claimed, "Skin tone emojis make white people confront their race as people of color often have to do." They then used this as more evidence to build the argument that white people using the yellow emoji is an underlying symptom of them viewing themselves as "raceless."

The tweet and article were met with resistance from some almost immediately, getting ratioed in regards to the quote tweets outnumbering the likes by almost five times. Twitter users referenced multiple memes that ironically related to the PC take like Stolen Valor and Justin Trudeau's brownface controversy, among others.

White people using 👍 is stolen valor

— Justin Whang 🐙 (@JustinWhang) February 9, 2022

what color emoji should Trudeau use

— Christina Pushaw 🐊🚛 (@ChristinaPushaw) February 9, 2022

Academics, lol

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) February 9, 2022

I'm on a nationwide search for the person who didn't hate the existence of this article. There has to be one. https://t.co/gTYMrHQJOf

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) February 10, 2022

Sometimes people just seem to be thinking waaaaay too hard. https://t.co/rT460XIsRr

— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️‍♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) February 10, 2022

In today’s latest edition of “We’ve Run Out of Things to Complain About.” https://t.co/6cYrHIMsmV

— Oliver Jia (オリバー・ジア) (@OliverJia1014) February 10, 2022

Additionally, non-white Twitter users added to the discussion, relaying how they thought the article was overly sensitive. One user said they were "an Iranian-born refugee and naturalized American" who viewed the think-piece as "childishly woke." Another Twitter user identified a conflict in regards to the intention of the article, citing evidence that one of the authors was employed by a third-party, multi-million dollar HR/staffing firm.

I'm an Iranian-born refugee and naturalized American.

This is childishly woke, and doesn't help people of color.

The yellow emoji is the default option.

Please focus on real issues that affect Americans.

— Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) February 9, 2022

Many are laughing at this, but no one seems to be pointing out that the only person in the article who actually says this is a non-academic NGO employee whose nonprofit employer oddly spends more than $500K of its ~$1.6M annual operating expenses on a 3rd-party HR/staffing firm. https://t.co/ys20Tfd5BC

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) February 10, 2022

One of the more noteworthy reactions, however, was when users recalled a Kanye West tweet from 2018 that made a joke about only using emojis that look like The Simpsons. It was the light at the end of the tunnel of the heated debate, which some labeled as a "step backward" for liberal media. Regardless, the article did share some interesting statistics about what groups use which emojis and unearthed a tension that apparently a lot of people were passionate about.

I leave my emojis bart Simpson color

— ye (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018