The Petition to Make Emoji Less Racist

The Petition to Make Emoji Less Racist

By Meghan Neal

If you spend a decent amount of time on the internet, chances are you've heard people raising hell because there are no African-American Emoji icons. Diversity-minded texters are now actually trying to do something about the emoticon racism problem, by petitioning Apple to add more people of color to its Emoji keyboard.

"If these Emoji are going to be the texting and Twitter standard, we think it’d be cool if they better reflected the diversity of the people using them," argues a petition currently up on DoSomething.org, spotted by Fast Company.

The petition laments that out of 800 emoticons, the only two person icons that aren't white: a guy who looks "vaguely Asian" and another wearing a turban. Meanwhile, it points out, there are two different camels, a smiling pile of poo, and a cop, bride, grandma and dancer, all white. But zero black people.

With the iOS7 update coming this fall, the petition owners are calling on Apple to include at least four dark-skinned faces—a man, woman, boy, and a girl. They even helpfully offer an example of what they might look like.

Granted, Apple doesn't own Emoji. The cute little icons originated in Japan (which doesn't have a huge black population) and for a time were only available there. Then in 2010, hundreds of Emoji were added to the Unicode Standard, making them available in the US and other countries, and soon afterward Apple made its version, iEmoji, available on iOS. Apple added icons and color to the iPhone's Emoji selection. Just not enough color.

Outrage over homogenous emoji has been building for more than a year now. Last December, Miley Cyrus made headlines for jumping on the emoji equality bandwagon, briefly, taking to Twitter to call for an ethnicity update to the emoticons. 

A couple month's after that, during Black History Month, Twitter and Instagram were again aflamewith impassioned pleas for icon diversity. This April, the @BlackPeopleEmoji Twitter account sprang up—though it seems to mostly tweet questionably racist things, and then question if they're racist.

When iOS6 came out, last June, Apple added the first gay and lesbian couples to its emoji palette. Considering the social media firestorm over racist Emoji up until that point, it does seem strange that Apple didn't take that moment of cultural diversity to add some black people, too.

Yet the controversy grew. Last month, a blog post on Immigration Talk suggested the lack of black Emoji illustrates the extent to which systemic racism and social hierarchy can rear its ugly head in society, even in the smallest and most seemingly trite ways:

Some white emojis, such as the image of the police officer, appear to hold positions of power, emphasizing the idea that minorities do not commonly occupy skilled jobs like these. In addition, the blonde princess represents that only pure and royal whites can obtain power. In fact, I am surprised that they do not have a white king. The white angel also shows white purity, while an image of white hands held up in a prayer position implies that religion or Catholicism is a white concept. In addition, the absence of non-white females demonstrates a lack of awareness of the intersectionality between race and gender in society.

Sociopolitical implications aside, it does seem like a no-brainer that here in the US—the world's melting pot, where nearly a third of the country is non-white, and more than 13 percent is African American—our modes of cybercommunication should accurately reflect the population. In fact, while we're at it, can we get some Latino emoji in there?

So far, the Do Something petition is 1,768 signatures of the way toward the 10,000 goal. If so inclined, you can add yours here. "We’ll deliver your signatures to Apple," the petition owners write. "Possibly on the backs of two different camels."

The Intelligence Community's New Tumblr Really Needs Some GIFs

The Intelligence Community's New Tumblr Really Needs Some GIFs

By Daniel Stuckey

The GIFs that appear in this piece were sent to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as a piece of free consulting, to help them make a better Tumblr.

At a rally for Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond on Monday night, Wikileak's lawyer Michael Ratner spoke of the utter desperation exhbited by the government as US citizens learn more than the Intelligence Community ever intended them to.

Now, in an attempt to appear more transparent a part of the conversation about transparency, the Intelligence Community's Tumblr (icontherecord.tumblr.com) has been launched by the Director of National Intelligence. Like those Manhattan Mini-Storage ads, which try in the most awkward of ways (I still don't get this) to belong in an unlikely context, this Tumblr is one of the more boring, off-topic, piece-of-shit Tumblrs ever.

Acting quite simply as a place for the DNI's messaging to live within the most visible place the NSA could think of, a social media webserver, all official statements of the DNI and NSA can be found on this Tumblr.

So, this is ironic, right? Just when Obama—who heeded the Tumblr into existence—said, "We can and must be more transparent. So I’ve directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these programs as possible," in comes this lousy Tumblr, which in theory should be susceptible to the NSA watching, as well as spying on its own Tumblr analytics. But I don't think it'll be getting many notes. That is, until they do something creative.

The Whitehouse's Tumblr promises to be social, to start a conversation. It accepts submissions via whitehouse.tumblr.com/submit, and posts GIFs. IC on the Record, on the other hand, isn't taking submissions. The blog doesn't have an active submit link that I could find. So I emailed them:

Dear James Clapper:

I receive your official statements in my email frequently. I've received 17 of them since the PRISM leaks came out. I applaud your taking Obama's advice to begin a Tumblr and posting your official statements there as well. For most of Tumblr's everfleetingdemographic (18 to 24-year-olds) it'll be much easier to go to your Tumblr page than to sign up for your press mailing list or to bookmarkwww.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/recent-news in their browsers. Your long, wordy defenses against journalism that's cast the organizations in the wrong light, and harmed your plight for transparency should be everywhere on the Internet. Especially, social media. (Bravo!) 

But your shitty Tumblr is only bound to end up the butt of a few jokes. You need to make it better.

I thought I'd include some assets, free of charge (this time) to help you get some notes. Heck, you could end up on Tumblr's Radar. (Don't worry, that's actually a good thing, possibly the best thing that can happen to you on Tumblr.) If you don't get interesting, you'll never attain Molly Soda-levels of Tumblr fame, and then you'll be very sad. Take a clue from what Obama has done with the Whitehouse Tumblr. Become a part of the conversation, don't just be some wall of text, listing your defense. You do that everywhere else already. And for cryin' out loud, addicontherecord.tumblr.com/submit, your conversation should go both ways, bucko!

Your's truly,

Daniel Stuckey

You know when you're at a party enjoying a conversation and someone flanks the conversation and starts talking about their abs? It's annoying. That said, it's a facet of social media (and the Internet) we simultaneously hate and celebrate: That it could take a new, bizarre, ridiculous course at any second. Do I think the IC on the Record Tumblr has that sort of potential? Clearly, if it did, that ship has already sailed. But, what if?

In the past, Keith Alexander has posed in ridiculous photo ops, and last year he did attend DefCon 20 in a black t-shirt, almost poised to join Bad Religion (if Bad Religion weren't so mean to God and American values). With that in mind, here's to hoping the honorable women and men that helm the Intelligence Community's Tumblr do something better with it. Like post a GIF or an awesome picture, dudes.