The color was not specified before, so it was up to the font creator. I think yellow was the most common choice. The test page shows all the icons as blue in my browser. I'm not against the new changes, but I think the old version was more popular in Asian countries than anywhere else, and wasn't really pro-white.
I really thought you meant Caucasian. Did you just mean light-skinned?
It would have been better if I said "light-skinned", yes. While East Asians are not "white" in the "racial" sense (ew), their skin is light much like Europeans', and thus when the Japanese created the emoji, they made them have light skin.
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The color was not specified before, so it was up to the font creator. I think yellow was the most common choice. The test page shows all the icons as blue in my browser. I'm not against the new changes, but I think the old version was more popular in Asian countries than anywhere else, and wasn't really pro-white.
Well, Apple made them mostly white. White people holding hands, white people praying, a white family.
Google and Microsoft’s neutral yellow was a lot more neutral there, yes.
Nope. Usually white (Apple, Japanese phones).
Thanks for the info. Still, it's hard to believe that Japanese phones would put Caucasian people all over their emoji. Related: "Why Do the Japanese Draw Themselves as White?" https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese...
They're not white in the sense of "European". They just have a light skin colour. Japanese skin isn't bright yellow.
A Japanese person draws a simple human face, an American draws a simple human face, both will draw "white" skin.
Way back up in this comment:
How so? If you're white, perhaps you see no problem with making everyone's skin white.
But the billions of people who aren't white might have a problem with it.
I really thought you meant Caucasian. Did you just mean light-skinned?
It would have been better if I said "light-skinned", yes. While East Asians are not "white" in the "racial" sense (ew), their skin is light much like Europeans', and thus when the Japanese created the emoji, they made them have light skin.
Sorry for the confusion.