There’s a very important battle happening in America and it’s been a long and stressful one: the fight for a more racially diverse emoji selection. Every day we stare at our phones and wonder what could be, what should be. We should live in a world where poop and high-five emoji coexist with black ones, but we don’t.
Well, the world is changing. According to Mashable, an emoji update is in the works that will feature more emoji of color:
The Unicode Consortium, the group that governs the emoji standard, proposed an update on Monday that addresses emoji diversity. It noted that while emoji characters were always intended to be generic, the color choices were invariably light-toned or yellow, leaving vast swaths of the human population unrepresented.
Wait, “proposed”? Siiiiigggghhhhh. So basically we’re still waiting. As the march toward emoji diversity continues, here’s a brief history of this IMPT fight.
December 18, 2012 (7:05 pM): As it were, everything begins with Miley Cyrus, whose tweet about the lack of emoji diversity gets over 6,000 retweets in support. The singer is lauded for kicking off the emoji-diversity revolution. But I’m pretty sure I angrily texted a friend about the issue before Miley.
August 2013: A Do Something petition for more diverse emojis passionately states, “If you look at Apple’s Emoji keyboard, what do you see? Two different camels. A smiling turd. EVERY PHASE OF THE MOON. But of the more than 800 Emojis, the only two resembling people of color are a guy who looks vaguely Asian and another in a turban.” It’s time to do something.
August 22, 2013: Fast Company joins the emoji diversity conversation and ponders, “Are Emojis Racist?” The answer is duh.
March 16, 2014: Tahj Mowry can barely contain his sadness over the emoji debate. There’s so much anger and drama in those ellipses.