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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

I sympathize. But this does also fall a little into the LEGO trap of claiming that ‘the yellow doesn’t specify any specific race so it can represent any of them!’ Which maybe held water right up until they wanted to make a Lando Calrissian minifigure and it became extremely obvious that he couldn’t be yellow; while all the other Star Wars characters they had already made yellow without a second thought rather gave the game away that maybe yellow minifigs are actually white people. And it’s not a fluke: The Simpsons are exactly the same.

The fact that the most enthusiastic adopters of non-yellow emojis seem to be non-white people, while white people tend to be more on the ‘I was fine being yellow’ side… just suck it up and pick a color.

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> The fact that the most enthusiastic adopters of non-yellow emojis seem to be non-white people, while white people tend to be more on the ‘I was fine being yellow’ side… just suck it up and pick a color.

I come from a country where almost nobody is white, and pretty much everyone is happily using the yellow emojis.

As a not-white person I hate the skin colored emojis. I find them to be a ridiculous waste of human thought, effort, and time.

I think it makes sense that in a country where the majority is not white the yellow emoji is picked to represent the majority.

So you'd think white people in a minority white country would not use the standard emoji? I doubt anyone would care.

the problem is that some countries have majority skin colors and significant minority skin colors, and the majority has not been nice to the minority, so in those countries it's an issue and they sort of export the problem to everybody else via a process of memetic transferal.

You might want to watch this. https://youtu.be/2ltWVmsbJxc

The “LEGO (race) problem” was only a problem once LEGO began licensing IP (it was NBA first, not Star Wars, actually) and had to make minifigs to match real people. Before that, minifigs were perfectly raceless, able to abstractly represent whatever sort of characters that children could imagine—just like the yellow emojis.

Yellow minifigs aren't “white”—they're “LEGO people”.

Any other interpretation is post-hoc historical revisionism imagining past racial bias in domains where it was never present.

Yellow LEGO minifigs (1978) predate The Simpsons (1987). There is no evidence to my knowledge that the latter was directly influenced by the former, such that the “yellow minifigs = white” line of reasoning makes any sense at all.

One doesn't have to have influenced the other, it's just pretty obvious that Matt Groening and the mostly white 70's Danes chose yellow as a cartoonish white skin colour surrogate, it's not a fluke, as the other commenter says.

Honest question: do you see Caucasian features in the default yellow smiley face ideogram?

When Wal-Mart used it as their logo, was that an attempt to market toward white people specifically?

When a Japanese guy drew the first widely-used set of emoji, do you think he was doing so under the auspices of white supremacy (so strongly that he didn't even notice the “yellow = Asian” racist stereotype he was obviously participating in)?

Well now you’re bringing white supremacy into a conversation that is more about white defaultism.

Nobody is saying that yellow emoji are white supremacist propaganda.

The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are. And when dark skinned people choose to use skin tone emoji for themselves it is just a bit kind of weird (just weird; not racist, not white supremacist) for white people to carry on using the yellow version.

And then it’s especially weird to continue to insist that it’s racially neutral in the face of the evidence that it really isn’t.

> The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are.

A citation is needed for this extraordinary claim.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there has actually been academic research done on the topic: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/244936525/Bl...

> The yellow emoji is not perceived as neutral by either Black or White readers. On average, both groups perceive it as more likely to index a White identity, and we find this effect to be stronger among White readers.

I wonder if this could be solved by just making the default emoji green or blue or something.

Skeeter is blue but represents black; Ice king is blue but almost certainly white. I don't know where Megamind fits in; and the Smurfs are almost certainly 'other'.

I think you're onto something.

The advantage of a neutral color is that it can be whatever you want in your local theme. Back when they were images supplied by the respective forum/etc. instead of giant fonts that only mega-corporations can afford to maintain it was not uncommon to have emoticons styled and colored differently to match the site theme and/or subject matter instead of the standard yellow.

It shouldn't be a surprise that these would be the findings of post-hoc research done in 2021, long after skin-tone modifiers were made available and in common use, rather than research that was done before skin-tone modifiers were added to the standard, so as to justify the additional complexity and possible nth-order societal effects of adding them—which, as far as I can tell, does not exist.

Instead, someone somewhere made the call that giving up the universality of cartoon yellow emoji was worth “making some people ‘feel more represented’”, even despite the numerous other tradeoffs and nth-order effects (no reddish Native American tone, added social complexity for biracial users (“am I ‘black enough’ to use the darkest one, in a given arbitrary social context?”), and so on), which people conveniently ignore.

The linked paper is too involved for me to really parse/grok, but I'm curious to know if the study(s) cited occurred before or after the introduction of skin-toned variations.

If there was only one colour available, and everyone knew there was only one option, would that lead people to think it was more neutral? Or, if the study(s) were post-variance introduction, people came to think the supposedly-neutral colour is 'actually' white.

Did the introduction of variations also introduce the idea of non-neutrality?

The paper was written in 2021, the skin-tone modifiers were added in 2015.

So when white people have emojis available that more accurately reflect their skin tone than the neutral-yellow one, and yet they prefer to use the one that DOESN'T reflect their skin tone nearly as well, to me that's pretty strong evidence that it is racially neutral, at least in their perception.

And really, when you're talking about perceived racial overtones of emojis, "in their perception" is what matters, isn't it? There's no objective, 2+2=4 truth that we can point to in this particular argument, as there is in some arguments, because it's all about what subtext different people are reading into things. The objective truth is that those pixels are a certain color; the perception of them is subjective, varying from person to person.

And while some people prefer to use emojis that reflect their skin tone (whether it's lighter or darker), others prefer to use the yellow emojis instead of the ones that would better reflect their skin tone. The fact that they chose that color when they had other options available suggests strongly that they are trying to communicate a "skin tone doesn't matter in the context of this communication" message.

You are arguing that the yellow color isn't inherently neutral, but I claim that you are making the perfect the enemy of the good. Even if the yellow color isn't inherently as neutral as it was intended to be, the fact that people are choosing it over colors that would more accurately reflect their skin tone means that it is neutral enough for the purpose.

> Well now you’re bringing white supremacy into a conversation that is more about white defaultism.... And then it’s especially weird to continue to insist that it’s racially neutral in the face of the evidence that it really isn’t.

When you put this much effort into saying "actually these things that don't literally resemble a white person's skin tone totally are intended to represent a white person's skin tone, because it's kinda vaguely similar; and for a long period of time you had people using the yellow to pretend to be inclusive but they really were just thinking of white people when they did it", it's hard to read that as anything other than "... and that's bad, and reflects a morally bad unconscious bias in favour of white people".

> The point is that white people (and yes East Asians too) are more readily able to identify with a yellow smiley face than black or other dark skinned people are.

1. Why?

2. Why does the use of a smiley face to convey an emotion (no matter what colour it's drawn) have anything whatsoever to do with "identifying with" the face? What does it even mean to "identify with" a drawing?

(smileys in Japanese emojis pre-Unicode were mostly ham colored, not yellow)

https://www.docomo.ne.jp/info/news_release/page/20060711.htm...

I apologize, you don’t seem to have followed my argument.

Lego had already put out a number of licensed sets featuring specific ‘real people’ (Star Wars characters) using just yellow minifigs. That changed in 2003 (same year as the NBA license) when they released the Cloud City set, and evidently came to the realization that they could not continue to use yellow for all characters. That set includes yellow Han and Leia minifigs, by the way - white skin tone minifigs came later.

The point is that if the claim which, yes, Lego has made since 1978, that yellow was neutral and could represent any race – if that claim has any value, they could have proudly released 10123 Cloud City with a yellow Lando.

They didn’t. Yellow turns out not to have been as neutral as they believed. Lando proves it.

As for Lego vs the Simpsons I didn’t claim any causative influence between the two - just pointing out that Simpsons made the same choice, with yellow representing white people, and nonwhite people having different skin tones. Both Lego and the Simpsons have accidentally encoded a white default under a ‘nonrealistic color choice’.

My point is that emojis have done exactly the same thing.

It's funny, because I think of emojis as entirely co-opted from the Japanese and so see the images in that context not having anything to do with LEGO or The Simpsons. The Japanese were SO COOL and ... lucky? with their extensive creativity making of the original text emojis that folk wanted to play along too... so picture emoijs came along.

It's all downstream of yellow smiley faces (1950s)—raceless ideograms conveying a common emotion (happiness) that humans of all races happen to share—and I honestly have no idea how this seems to escape everyone today.

Oh I agree. They're from the gold smiley face stickers extrapolated to more emotions. I meant that I _don't_ connect the gold to Simpsons and LEGO. I just connect the whole emoji concept to the Japanese and thus don't consider anything about it at all to be "white-centric". Once you do associate the smiley faces with LEGO/Simpsons then you do start to make these connections that... just don't need to be there and let the conversation get muddled in drama.

Weird that you’re perceiving this as ‘drama’. I fear you think that this issue is in some way political.

I’m not ‘connecting’ this to Lego and the Simpsons as if there’s some global yellow conspiracy.

I’m pointing out that the arguments people make about yellow being ‘neutral’ when you go beyond abstract symbolism to personalization – as is happening with the co-opting of emoji to become personal ‘reactions’ – have been made before in similar circumstances and have proven to be quite weak.

It's not political so much as people of color want to use emojis they identify with, and it's very common for them not to identify with yellow because it's so much further from their own skin tone than yellow is to caucasians and asians

Emojis are about ideas. Believing that a skin color can tell everything there is about you (and thus "identifying" with one) is incredibly racist.

Historically the colour “yellow” was associated with East Asian people, not people of European descent-who for whatever reason got associated with the colour “white”, despite the fact European skin colour is more pinky/peachy (but getting more “olive” as one heads south). And keep in mind emoji were invented in Japan, where I don’t think anybody was thinking “yellow smiley face=European ancestry”

So there's a peculiar thing happening here.

I pointed out that a particular color choice, using yellow for faces, made independently and for perfectly good aesthetic and design reasons and with benign intent by the designers of emoji, following in the illustrious, well trodden footsteps of the LEGO group and Mat Groening, has a particular cultural interpretation when placed alongside dark skin tone alternatives.

Now, what a lot of people seem to have read into this is that I think the original designers of the emoji had racist intent. Or that I am at least accusing them of being passively racist. Likewise Lego and Mat Groening, presumably.

That is a misreading of what I said.

The statement 'this thing has a differential impact on people of different races' does not automatically mean 'the people responsible for this thing are being accused of perpetrating racism'. But apparently many readers assume that to be the case.

So a lot of the replies I've gotten here seem to be leaping into some sort of culture-war defense of Lego, of yellow emoji, etc.

Emoji are Japanese, how can they possibly perpetuate default whiteness?! Are you accusing NTT DoCoMo of promoting white supremacy?

Like... really, no, that's not what I said, is it? I wrote about how the arrival of dark skinned options in a 'default yellow' world repeatedly reveals that 'default yellow' is, in Western culture, actually 'default white'. And that that repeated lesson explains why white people sticking with yellow isn't 'not choosing a skintone'. It's choosing white, but pretending not to. Because you don't have to.

I don't see anyone misreading you that way.

When people talk about the history of emojis, they're giving evidence that yellow isn't white. They're not accusing you of saying anything about history.

> I wrote about how the arrival of dark skinned options in a 'default yellow' world repeatedly reveals that 'default yellow' is, in Western culture, actually 'default white'. And that that repeated lesson explains why white people sticking with yellow isn't 'not choosing a skintone'. It's choosing white, but pretending not to. Because you don't have to.

Are you talking about “Western culture”, or “progressive-leaning US(-centric) culture”? Because the idea that a colour choice made in Japan has some kind of racial meaning is much more strongly associated with the second than the first.

> The statement 'this thing has a differential impact on people of different races' does not automatically mean 'the people responsible for this thing are being accused of perpetrating racism'.

I genuinely don't understand how this claim can be sincerely made in the contemporary American political climate. The entire point of pointing at "differential impact" is to take the premise that it's an inherent moral wrong, and can be pursued regardless of the underlying cause, or of the intent of anyone involved. That's why the term "institutional racism" was coined.

>Emoji are Japanese, how can they possibly perpetuate default whiteness?!

That's the point. They cannot. That's exactly why your argument that "they really have represented white people all this time" (as with the LEGO figures) doesn't hold water.

> Like... really, no, that's not what I said, is it? I wrote about how the arrival of dark skinned options in a 'default yellow' world repeatedly reveals that 'default yellow' is, in Western culture, actually 'default white'. And that that repeated lesson explains why white people sticking with yellow isn't 'not choosing a skintone'. It's choosing white, but pretending not to. Because you don't have to.

This paragraph reads to me like you are trying very hard to claim that you didn't say what you said, by saying it again.

Whats weird that you, as a white man, feel the need to speak on behalf of people of color.

You dont need to do that.

The 'drama' wasn't your comment... and explaining it will just create more hand-wringing, so... imma just let it go but, it wasn't about what you said that I called 'drama'.

>I fear you think that this issue is in some way political.

You are the one who started out the thread by suggesting that it's somehow weird that white people don't use white skin-tone emojis, while also arguing that "yellow-as-default" is somehow problematic and/or insincere.

Those are both plainly political. Identity politics, and racial politics, are politics. You are implying that people should change their real-world behaviour for reasons related to race.

Pretending that emoticons are a Japanese invention is also a weird kind of historical revisionism.

Emojis, however, are a Japanese invention (related but different from emoticons).

BTW, even the word emoji (from Japanese e = picture, moji = character) is unrelated to the word emoticon.

Lego only started licensing in 1999, and by the time they fully embraced it they had almost completely rejected their entire product philosophy. What really happened is that, by 2003, the company had been taken over by entirely different people who cared more about how much money they could make from licensing deals than about the original vision of their product. (Things have since improved marginally, partly as a response to backlash.)

I dont think you understood his comment. He's right.

And not because they intentionally made yellow into white, but because they unintentionally made it so.

It's exactly the same as being an american vs being an african-american. You don't call white americans european-americans. Society (or media) assigned a racial default.

I'm gonna be a little more forward with this last argument: This is the product of mixed societies that have not dealt with racial bias and/or the consequences of racism well.

If you interpret the term “American” to only refer to white people, maybe you’re the one with racial problems.

You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?. Same as "native-american".

The fact is that there already exists a racial default, I didn't make it, it simply exists due to the nuances of our society, its history and/or its media.

I didn't invent either term and I am not THE dictionary.

This is how these terms are interpreted by the world and also through simple logic. I am not the one who interprets these terms and their usage.

American society and culture is still severely segregated due to how crappily it dealt with the consequences of its racist history.

White americans are considered american and black americans are considered african americans. It is not a mutually exclusive truth, but it is the norm, and that's what we're talking about.

We're not talking about pure logic of meaning, we're talking about social usage of terms.

> You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?

Because in the current ((zeitgeist)) Europeans are not allowed to have a racial identity.

"European" is a racial identity more in the americas than in europe.

Your comments are becoming really tiring, it's like reading certain parts of Reddit or 4chan.

> You're missing the point. "American" can be interpreted as racially neutral, but then why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?. Same as "native-american".

Or Italian American.

> White americans are considered american and black americans are considered african americans. It is not a mutually exclusive truth, but it is the norm, and that's what we're talking about.

African American is an alternative to "black". It was not invented to make a lesser form of "American". Your simple logic is just wrong, as these things frequently are.

> African American is an alternative to "black". It was not invented to make a lesser form of "American".

Man, I'm not saying its lesser. I'm talking about how its used.

I think you want to assign morality to my arguments when im being as neutral as possible.

In some widespread contexts "american" is racially defaulted to white. Full stop.

Like I said were not talking about the pure logical meaning of words were talking about how society uses them.

> In some widespread contexts "american" is racially defaulted to white. Full stop.

No, this is a personal problem on your part.

I'll just copy part of my other comment:

As another comment pointed out this is in part due to racial majority being defaulted into the non-specific term "american". As in: most americans are white so "americans" is thought of as refering to the biggest group of americans.

And in part due to historical subjugation of those other "americans". As in: less than 80 years ago the term "americans" was used almost exclusively to refer to white americans due to systemic racism.

It is still particularly prevalent in media headlines.

I don't know why you think I would make this up, lol.

> I don't know why you think I would make this up, lol.

You're in far less danger of being accused of originality than you are of regurgitating banality.

Non comment. Disregarded.

> I don't know why you think I would make this up

Because it's false, as I demonstrated in my other comment.

Like I said in the other chain:

What were civil rights issues about if not that "american" literally didn't apply to all of us on a constitutional/federal/state and cultural level?

You seem to be fixated on pointing out that ultimate neutrality has always existed when referencing the term "american" when everything proves otherwise.

And on top of that you want to say I'm biased because I'm pointing out that neutrality hasn't always existed around that term.

Chill out, dude.

> In some widespread contexts "american" is racially defaulted to white. Full stop.

Can you say what these widespread contexts are? Question mark.

When you need to specify what kind of lineage a person carries people will commonly say a person is "african-american" or "native-american", but never say "european-american".

This context is still particularly prevalent in media headlines.

> When you need to specify what kind of lineage a person carries people will commonly say a person is "african-american" or "native-american", but never say "european-american".

Well, as I say, Italian American is another one, and that's for white people. But more generally: these categories are (mostly) self-imposed (although I hear people who progressives would call "native American" actually call themselves "Indian"). African American is a substitute for "black", and driven by black Americans and progressives. It's a deliberate choice to enforce the label, just as it's a deliberate choice to have the n-word be, as they'd say, "our word". "people of color" is the same, although that's more an excluding category than an including one. This isn't coming from "systemic racism". It's coming from progressive academia, determined to re-divide America, and transitively everywhere else, in order to create some lovely social sciences problems to "solve".

You say its "progressive academia" but unless people are reading sociology research papers the way nearly all people come upon this is through mass media.

Is it now your theory to say that "progressive academia" controls mass media?

Or do you think its fine to say that somehow viewers themselves control mass media?

The truth is advertisers and shareholders control mass media.

Your statement also hinges on the assumption that america was united, at least on racial issues, and is now trying to be divided.

Back to the media. Your argument also uses the same rationalization as anti-DEI folks who blame a diversity-conspiracy when in reality it was just corporations (capitalism) trying to appear cool and understanding for more shareholder value. Every minority knew it was mostly a marketing gimmick by corporations (i knew).

The analogy here is that you take something the media did for money and externalize it as a social-sciences conspiracy.

The biggest mistake the masses do is thinking what the media and corporations do for money actually represents the will of the masses. That is the culture war.

The fact of the matter is that there is a racial-default bias within mass media and little plastic toy companies (lego) due to historical contexts. There's also racial tip-toeing to avoid being seen as racist due to company reputation and shareholder value. You are focused on the latter.

> why is "african-american" very common, but using "european-american" is almost non existent?

You’re a couple decades out of date. “African American” isn’t that commonly used anymore; the much more commonly used term is “black”. Or if you want to make a finer distinction, I’ve also seen the term ADOS (American Descendant of Slaves).

“Native American” is a neologism white liberals made up in the 1970’s because they didn’t like the term “American Indian”. It turns out almost all of the American Indians at the time preferred “American Indian” to “Native American”, but nobody actually asked them.

“European American” isn’t commonly used because at the same time that “African American” was popular, so was the idea that white people shouldn’t have a racial self identity at all so there was zero impetus to try and push a politically correct euphemism for “white”. Even today a common style decision is to always capitalize the term “black” but not the term “white”.

Furthermore, whenever we do talk about people in terms of nationality, such as during the Olympic Games, black Americans are consistently referred to as “Americans” rather than “African Americans”.

Finally, what do you think was the internal logic of referring to black Americans as African Americans in the first place? It was to remind everyone that they are also Americans. It’s just like whenever people talk about Japanese-American internment during WW2, they add “American” to underscore the injustice of treating US citizens that way. A Japanese national who wasn’t a US citizen could more justifiably be detained, just as Germans and Italians were, but treating Americans that way is beyond the pale.

What you’re doing here is taking a phrasing that was intentionally designed to use American patriotism to improve public perception of black people and twisting it around into yet another insidious form of crypto-anti-black racism using insane troll logic. And in that respect, you are the one missing the point.

And so how does this relate to legos?

I was explaining reasonings for lego defaulting yellow into white.

The defaulting of "american" into white does happen frequently in news headlines by simple fact of often referring to black people as "african americans" and white people simply as "americans".

And like someone else pointed out in the thread there have also been studies who have researched this topic. I think it's a real bias people/media seems to have.

You may have a point with your retelling of the history of terms, I dont really know and I wont pretend to know. Though i sense some racial resentment in you with your statement that white people shouldn't, or weren't allowed to, have a racial self identity. But that is beside the point.

> Finally, what do you think was the internal logic of referring to black Americans as African Americans in the first place? It was to remind everyone that they are also Americans.

I don't think it was to subjugate them I think those are after effects of this country who systemically subdued other races and identified itself as white. In part that will never go away because the majority is still white. But there is a latent bias in there. And that's what I'm pointing out.

You're trying to accuse me of "crypto-anti-black racism" when I point out that we come from a racist society. Like I said before: 80 years ago+, 2-3 generations min, "americans" was meant to refer to white americans only. And that was almost 100 years AFTER slavery was abolished. The country was incredibly racist till relatively recently.

I am simply pointing out how the bias of a white nation still lives on in some way today and can be seen in the racial defaulting of little plastic figurine colors.

> You're trying to accuse me of "crypto-anti-black racism"

No, I'm saying you're accusing the people who coined the term "African American", or perhaps the term itself, of crypto anti-black racism.

> Like I said before: 80 years ago+, 2-3 generations min, "americans" was meant to refer to white americans only.

80 years ago was 1945. Let me quote from the Richmond Times-Dispatch on August 5, 1936, reporting on the performance of Jesse Owens in the Olympics. If you have access to newspapers.com you can follow this link to a clipping I created: https://www.newspapers.com/article/richmond-times-dispatch-j...

> The weather turned blustery with the day's usual shower but Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler and another capacity crowd of 100,000 jammed the big concrete stadium most of the day with Owens as the main magnet.

> Der Fuehrer joined in terrific applause accorded the American ace whose performances now have thrilled upwards of 300,000 spectators three straight days and given the Olympic games their most outstanding individual performer since Paavo Nurmi's exploits of 1924 when the "Phantom Finn" won three gold medals.

> After fouling on his first trial in the finals, Owens jumped 26 feet 39-64 inch, finally 26 feet 5 21-64 inches while the stadium echoed with a roar that could be heard all over the Olympic plant.

89 years ago, an American newspaper--one in the south, no less--referred to Jesse Owens, without any further qualification, as "the American ace".

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, on the same date: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-plain-dealer-owens-cl...

> AMERICANS ROUT WORLD IN OLYMPICS > Owens Cracks Broad Jump Record as U.S. Wins Four Events. ... > The United States track and field forces put the athletes from the rest of the world to rout today in one of the greatest field days any nation ever experienced in Olympic competition. > Four times the Stars and Stripes waved triumphantly from the victory flagpole as Uncle Sam's stalwarts staged a smashing exhibition of sprinting, leaping, and hurdling before a crowd of 110,000. > Americans made a clean sweep of all championships in the men's division, retaining their broad jump supremacy with a record-breaking Olympic leap by John Cleveland (Jesse) Owens, 22-year-old Ohio State Negro...

The story does state Owens' race in a dated and uncomfortable way. (Remind me, which one of us is arguing that it's awkward and uncomfortable to emphasize someone's race?) But note that prior to doing so, the article twice includes Owens in statements about "Americans" routing the world and making a clean sweep of championships, and lauds him as one of "Uncle Sam's stalwarts". I'm not saying that racism didn't exist in 1936 or that Jesse Owens was treated fairly, but there was no inhibition against referring to him, or any other black American, as an American whenever it was relevant to do so.

> And so how does this relate to legos?

I would be justified in asking you the same question. Legos are Danish. It's not actually clear how the history of American racism or the applicability of the term "American" to black people prior to 1945 has any bearing on the creative intent of a Danish toy manufacturer, and if anything it's a little ethnocentric to judge it in that context.

Jesse Owens example is literally one example and one where they would have the obvious inclination for him to be in-group.

> (Remind me, which one of us is arguing that it's awkward and uncomfortable to emphasize someone's race?)

I don't think its awkward or uncomfortable to emphasize someones race. I'm mixed and I identify as both black and white, purposefully.

I can tell how deep you are into the culture war because you seem to be arguing right past me and with some imaginary figure of me that you have in your head.

Tell me what do you think the civil rights issues were/are about? Nah, ill tell you: That "american" didn't actually mean all of us on a constitutional/federal/state level and even cultural level.

I'm not gonna pretend I'm a sociology expert for internet points but there are many papers that show evidence of what I'm saying and they are not hard to find at all. Literally put a small amount of effort and you'll see at least 5 pop up. You can analyze their results if you want.

> Legos are Danish. It's not actually clear how the history of American racism or the applicability of the term "American" to black people prior to 1945 has any bearing on the creative intent of a Danish toy manufacturer, and if anything it's a little ethnocentric to judge it in that context.

Hilarious, dude. You totally lost the plot. I was using "american" vs "african american" bias as an analogy to explain the "yellow was universal" but that lego then decided to add brown lego figures. Yellow wasn't actually universal, yellow was white. White was then implicitly seen as universal.

The culture warrior has ended themselves.

> Jesse Owens example is literally one example

He wasn’t even the only black American gold medalist from that day’s track and field competition. Regardless, you made the claim that the term “American” was never used, without qualification, to refer to black people prior to 1945. One or two counterexamples is enough to disprove such a claim.

> I don't think it’s awkward or uncomfortable to emphasize someone’s race.

And I do. That’s part of the disagreement that we’re working through here.

> Tell me what do you think the civil rights issues were/are about? Nah, I’ll tell you: That "american" didn't actually mean all of us on a constitutional/federal/state level and even cultural level.

I already addressed this. Repeating for clarity: I'm not saying that racism didn't exist in 1936 or that Jesse Owens was treated fairly, but there was no inhibition against referring to him, or any other black American, as an American whenever it was relevant to do so.

You made the very specific claim that the term “American” was not used to refer to black people prior to 1945. Now that I’ve demonstrated that this claim is false, you are using figurative language to retreat to the claim that black people were not historically treated equally to white people. But I have never disputed this. You are the one arguing right past me and with some imaginary figure in your head.

Furthermore, as I’ve already said, this is exactly the reason that the term “African American” became popular at one point: because it emphasized that black people were also Americans. Contrary to your false claim that it was meant as a backhanded implication that they weren’t Americans.

> The culture warrior has ended themselves.

Uncalled for and unnecessary.

I'm not retreating into a wider claim. The civil rights issues were literally about "american" not meaning all of us legally.

That is my example for prior usage of the word "american" being biased. It was so biased that people willfully forgot the law and the constitution. Why does it not suffice?

Here is one more I recall:

“When I say all Americans — I mean all Americans...” President Truman when ending segregation in the army

I could keep looking up examples but I feel these are fundamental enough.

Yes african american emphasizes it, there was a need to do that. I wonder why?

Also I should add that I specifically dont give a damn about emoji color. I always leave default yellow cause i rarely use em anyways.

You're playing semantic games. I was specifically addressing your claim that the term "American" is and was widely understood not to refer to black people, and you have retreated from that claim in a puff of figurative language. Civil rights issues were and are not literally about word usage, but rather segregation and discrimination and voting and things of that nature.

Word interpretation is a part of "word usage".

> Society (or media) assigned a racial default.

There is nothing wrong with the majority becoming seen as a default. It is inevitable, because defaults are useful, and choosing anything else would increase the fraction of the time that it's wrong.

You're absolutely right. But look up the thread at what was being said.

We were talking about "yellow" being racially neutral according to lego and how that was proven wrong by lego themselves.

Same thing happened in US media (by media i mean all mediatic content).

Its the cause of racialized realities. It absolutely is the result of racist societies.

And sure, the majority being a single race is a neutral fact today. But how we got there is absolutely through a racist history.

> Which maybe held water right up until they wanted to make a Lando Calrissian minifigure and it became extremely obvious that he couldn’t be yellow

Why couldn't he? I would say the people who insist Lando must be othered in this way are the people who are being weird here, not the people who used yellow for characters whose race didn't matter to them.

Because he wouldn't be recognizable? It would be like making Yoda pink or R2D2 black.

> Because he wouldn't be recognizable?

Why not? Did anyone try mocking it up? His facial hair would show up fine against yellow. If the white characters were recognisable with yellow heads, why wouldn't it work for him?

https://hallofbricks.shop/cdn/shop/files/lego_starwars_minif... (original)

https://imgur.com/a/KzlTbO2 (gpt 5 - yellow plastic)

Looks fine to me?

Not disagreeing, but as a bonus they can reuse the head and hair pieces for Tom Selleck in any Magnum, P.I. sets they might make.

There's something about the yellow plastic version that feels more Lando, like it reflects some kind of distilled essence of the character.

I was ready to criticize, but... he looks pretty perfect like that

It's really weird how this particular kind of racism is not only acceptable in the current zeitgeist but enforced as dogma. Why is anyone's skin color their most important defining characteristic?

This feels more like virtue signaling than any kind of reason: This kind of logic lets you forever find new kinds of racism that you can then make performative fights against so that you can ignore real issues that plague the world.

I think of skin colour like hair colour: it doesn't really mean anything, yet people still have degrading stereotypes; and changing it can make someone hard to recognise, especially in cases where a person is being caricatured anyway (which is lego but also Funko Pop).

Take these images, how recognisable would any of the characters (those with hair) be with different hair?

https://d2j6dbq0eux0bg.cloudfront.net/images/35476104/296227...

https://75609.cdn.simplo7.net/static/75609/sku/funko-pop-fun...

> But this does also fall a little into the LEGO trap of claiming that ‘the yellow doesn’t specify any specific race so it can represent any of them!’ Which maybe held water right up until they wanted to make a Lando Calrissian minifigure and it became extremely obvious that he couldn’t be yellow […]

If there was only one colour available, and everyone knew there was only one option, would that lead people to think it was more neutral? Did the introduction of variations also introduce the idea of non-neutrality (of yellow)?

LEGO is different from The Simpsons in that LEGO bricks for a long time were limited to seven colours: the four primary colours, white, black and light grey.

The first "proto-minifigs" in 1975 were still relatively abstract: made of bricks, albeit special bricks. The yellow head had the same shape as now but had no facial features.

We should go with purple. Nobody is even close to being purple. Hell: depending on your semantics, purple isn't even a real color. (Blue, of course, might should be reserved for AIs ;P.)

The trap is thinking that because some creative works have made the mistake of assigning realistic skin tones to some characters based on race that we now need to repeat the same instead of learning from it.

Ah - I’m not actually making an argument on the subject of whether adding skin tone emojis is a good idea. I’m just saying that, once they exist, white people getting upset about it and refusing to switch away from yellow is a weird hill to die on.

> I’m just saying that, once they exist, white people getting upset about it and refusing to switch away from yellow is a weird hill to die on.

It isn't, because they know they won't be treated fairly if they do. This is why you can immerse yourself in a context where the large majority of people are white, but see brown and black skin tone emoji vastly more often than you see white skin tone emoji. And describing this reluctance to use the white emoji as "getting upset" is a part of the same memeplex that discourages them from taking part in the first place. Someone can argue that you, as a white person, are wrong no matter what you do (see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-emoji-skin-tone-you-choo... — and please note how condescending and unhelpful the conclusion is, and the frankly antagonistic worldview it presents), but at least by sticking with the default you can say that you didn't put conscious effort into being wrong.

But even beyond that, the so-called "colour-blindness" is supposed to be a core liberal value, and I'm not giving it up. If I am called racist for doing what I used to be counseled to do so as not to be racist, then I am being abused.

Can you support your statement that this particular kind of color blindness is a core liberal value?

I don't understand the request. There are no "particular kinds" of colour blindness in play here; in context, the term refers to one clearly defined concept — i.e., not taking race into consideration when making decisions about how to treat people. That this is a core liberal value is so self-evident that I can't fathom why support would be necessary. But try considering it from the perspective of Rawls' Veil of Ignorance, for example.

Why change to accommodate a bunch of personal preferences?

Is it specified that semantically neutral appear yellow or is the color free to vary by implementation/user preference?

Unicode says

> When a human emoji is not immediately followed by an emoji modifier character, it should use a generic, non-realistic skin tone, such as RGB #FFCC22 (one of the colors typically used for the smiley faces).

https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Diversity

I get it, but I still wish I could use a non-realistic skin tone to match my mood instead of my body.

Sometimes I'm really into your suggestion of Taco Bell for lunch and want to give it a rainbow sparkle thumbs up.

I'm pretty sure the yellow colour for emoji was chosen by NTT in Japan

I remember ICQ and early forum software with yellow smiles (emoji was not a word yet). First NTT eonji set is 1999 according to Wikipedia, and ICQ is 1996-1998 (I'm not sure, that first version contains graphical smiles, but 1998 one for sure had ones).

Starting my online life in FIDO, with its deep and reach culture of text smiles (a hundreds of them were invented and tens of them were in wide circulation) I was personally offended by these stupid yellow circles.

I remember thinking emoji are cheating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Unicode is absolutely cheating. ;) :P

> […] I was personally offended by these stupid yellow circles.

What I don't like is when software/services try to be 'clever' / 'helpful' and 'translate' ASCII smileys into emojis. At this point I have to `backtick` sometimes to keep them as-is.

I thought the skin color thing is silly until I saw this vine. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9ZLq1iLCc6g

Apparently it is important to some. So I stopped complaining.

Yellow doesn't represent anything, it represents nothing. It's a blank hole that people can fill in with their biases. White people will picture it to be white, black people can imagine it being black. That becomes a problem when you want to represent a black character, to a bunch of white people, who consider him being black an important part of his character. In other words it's (very deliberately) a bad tool for talking about race.

> the LEGO trap of claiming that ‘the yellow doesn’t specify any specific race so it can represent any of them!’ Which maybe held water right up until they wanted to make a Lando Calrissian minifigure

Your analysis is ahistorical.

A simple image search shows that LEGO figures were not, in fact, all yellow all the time, e.g. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/media.brothers-brick.com/... In fact, Lando's own colour varies across editions. You might also have pointed out that they didn't make Yoda yellow, either.

More importantly: the earlier figures, when they were "yellow", were definitely more subtle shades that could more realistically represent "white people", who were overwhelmingly the original audience (since the toy was invented in Denmark, and we're talking about a period long before the modern political sensibilities around "diversity and inclusion"). It seems clear to me that there was a goal of something like realism for a long time, and that goal continues with licensed figures. Skin tones are just kinda hard to do in most artistic media.

That history also predates Unicode emoji. If anything, LEGO has settled on a specific shade of yellow for "generic" people because of the ubiquity of emoji.

My experience strongly indicates that white people overwhelmingly "were fine being yellow", and that there are two clear reasons for it:

* They suspect that not-white people who choose a colour are trying to make a point of their not-white status for political or ideological reasons, often in a context where there's no good reason for it to matter

* They worry that if they choose the "white" skin tone that they'll be perceived as trying to make the same point about being white, and furthermore that doing so may attract strong negative attention, in the form of rhetoric about "white supremacy".

My experience also strongly indicates that both these ideas are entirely reasonable to hold. In practice, the "dark" skin tones are an option that not-white people have to draw attention to themselves (and they often choose not to); the one "light" skin tone is only every used ironically to make a political point. It's well understood that people with a specific range of skin appearance are, for historical reasons specific to one part of the world (which is not where emoji originally come from), not permitted to take "pride" (whatever that means, when referring to something you can't meaningfully change about yourself) in the fact of having that skin appearance, while everyone else is.

And of course, hardly anyone would be comfortable using emojis that deliberately misrepresent their own skin tone, except by "choosing" yellow — because yellow is seen as the default, by everyone. (Because it also structurally is, the way Unicode works, and the way that emoji-selection UIs work. People will commonly see the yellow versions as a failure or refusal to choose, rather than as a choice.)

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