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Comment by lucas_codes | Hacker News Reader

Although yellow seems like it's good for everyone (since no one is actually yellow), it ends up still representing the majority. Just look at the Simpsons - all the characters are yellow, but not Apu.

Also skin tone options are extremely popular with people of colour - probably because they feel the default yellow doesn't represent them.

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> All characters are yellow, but not Apu.

This is a great example. All the yellow characters in The Simpsons are coded white (from my recollection).

Nobody is actually yellow, but bright yellow skin is very clearly obviously not black or dark brown; it's much more functionally similar to light skin tones.

Maybe the "true" solution would be to use a color that's completely different from all skin tones, such as a very deep blue color. But my immediate reaction to the thought of deep blue emoji is that I wouldn't identify with them - which, again, kind of proves the point that bright yellow is much easier to identify with for light-skinned people

PBS Kids did a good job with this, in my opinion, with their green characters. [0] I think replacing the default yellow skin with green would be a good thing.

That said, the on-going work into representing all humans in emojis is wonderful, and I really admire the clever technical solutions like this handshake proposal.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/76/PBS_Kid...

I'd wager that the popularity of dark emojis has more to do with their contrast and less with politics. Most dark people in the world aren't minorities where they live.

Contrast on what sense?

Would dark mode users prefer yellow?

In the sense of contrasting significantly from light backgrounds.

Maybe.

I haven't watched the Simpsons, but it's really unfortunate that they did that. I suppose the problem with fictional skin colors is people will always assume it represents the racial majority. Similar to how icons are usually coded male in the absence of female signifiers.

I wonder if it's possible to avoid that. What if at the outset, we'd used a different color for every emoji? Smile could be green, frown could be blue, wink could be yellow, etc.

I think that Simpsons never intended their characters to be race neutral. They are social/cultural parodie where it is always pretty clear who exactly they make jokes about.

There are also some episodes that are very clearly explicitly about race. If nothing else, the use of n-word makes it super clear who is white.

i have never seen a yellow person except in cartoons and emoji

What race do you think the yellow characters on the Simpsons are supposed to represent?

A null race that doesn't exist

So the majority of people are yellow, and yet we still have black/brown characters (Bleeding Gums Murphy, Apu, Carl, Dr. Hibbert, etc) and most East Asian characters were given almond shaped eyes.

It's almost like there's a correspondence with the "average" yellow Simpson's character and some real world US ethnic majority...

So, Carl Carlson, Dr. Hibbert and Bleeding Gums Murphy are pretty clearly Black, Apu is pretty clearly Indian, Bumble Bee man is pretty clearly Mexican, but all the yellow characters are... "a null race?"

Despite all clearly having signifiers of white people, and several of them clearly ethnically Italian or German, and most of the rest being Waspy?

Does this not simply speak of what you perceive as the "null race" or, perhaps, default race?

And when the Simpson's producers said a few years ago that they were going to stop voicing non-white characters with non-white actors, who did they find to voice all the "null-race" characters?

Homo Sapiens?

*Homer Sapiens

That's a species.

If anyone on this thread has any doubt, here is Homer Simpson explicitly declaring that he is a "white male": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t28ZB1t6gg8&ab_channel=Mostl...

> all the characters are yellow, but not Apu.

not true.

asians are a lighter tone: https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Osaka-Flu...

carl is black: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/2/29/Numbe...

the hispanic bee guy: https://img.chilango.com/2014/11/el-hombre-abejorro.jpg

This is actually further to the point, all the examples you’ve given are explicitly racially diverse characters, meaning that yellow does in fact represent the majority, and implies whiteness.

> meaning that yellow does in fact represent the majority, and implies whiteness

in The Simpsons, yes.

> it ends up still representing the majority

What does that mean though? I see Fat Tony as Italian-American, Rainier Wolfcastle as Austrian, and Akira as Japanese. The majority of the population of Springfield, which is supposed to be somewhere in North America, is probably "white".

So the context of the show itself, and how characters are portrayed imply their race/nationality. This is not true of an emoji.

Th color isn't neutral. A neutral color choice would be green like Android, that's an orthognat color to human melanin spectrum/range.

Which humans are bright yellow?

IIRC Akira is a different shade of yellow compared to most of the characters.

His eyes are also drawn squinting.

Similar shade to sideshow Mel, who I think is either British, or Dutch.

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