Apple's new emojis are not meant to be racist

After years of being criticised for not being diverse enough with their emojis, Apple decided to listen to the infinitely long list of complaints.

The latest OS they released has a new set of emoticons that cover all skin tones; whereas before you could only choose one of 3 emojis that represented race (none of which had black people). Now you can choose from 6 emojis that cover way more range.

The problem is these skins tones go all the way up to a bright yellow (as in The Simpsons yellow) and this has sparked a whole new wave of emoji outcry.

Many people thought that the yellow emoji was a racist depiction of Asian people and this did not sit too well.

So, people took to the internet to complain about the new form of racism Apple's emojis displayed: 

And it appears Apple thinks Asian/'yellow' people have jaundice http://t.co/dqXNVpRL5S pic.twitter.com/f5UcCcshBy

— Natt Garun (@nattgarun) February 23, 2015

Are the new yellow emoji supposed to be asian because I'm pretty sure that yellow skin thing isn't supposed to be literal

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) February 25, 2015

Totally see why Asians feel rather discriminated by Apple’s “diverse” yellow emoji http://t.co/uNQPGTGe4V

— Adrienne Simons (@adrienne_simons) February 25, 2015

Well it turns out that there is an actual technical reason why there are yellow emojis, that have nothing to do with racism. According to The Huffington Post, the yellow colour in some of the emojis are not meant to be a skin tone option at all. Rather, it is a default emoji colour that exists outside the new skin tone colour options.

Basically, when a device can't interpret a particular colour-combination in the code, it will default back to an unrealistic colour, and we all know that yellow smileys were the original picture emojis. When you think about it like that is makes more sense.

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