Emojis have become a universal language, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers. However, a glaring gap has persisted in this form of communication: the lack of diverse representation, particularly for the Black community.
Initially, emojis of people featured one skin tone. Even though the emojis were supposed to be for everyone’s use, the default design looked Caucasian. Yet, until recently, they failed to capture the nuances of diverse cultures, especially Black culture.
The default yellow emoji
The Rise of Diverse Emojis
Where did the idea of more diverse and inclusive emoji choices come from? The idea for Parrott’s copy-and-paste iOS app with a diverse set of emojis came after a conversation Parrott had with her daughter, Katy, in 2013.
Having worked in the aerospace industry for over twenty years in procurement, subcontract management, and logistics at companies like NASA, Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell International, and the United Space Alliance, Parrott had not worked on a project like iDiversicons® before.
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Parrott assembled a small team, including a senior software engineer, illustrator, copyright specialist, and videographer to design the emojis and secure copyrights. As early as July 2013 she registered her emojis with the US Copyright Office and applied for design and utility patents. On October 11, 2013, over 300 emojis were made available through her iDiversicon® app in the Apple App Store.
Parrott was determined to solve this lack of representation and also saw an opportunity to monetize her concept. “What I learned in business is if you come up with an idea that nobody else has and you’re the first on the scene, it gives you a real good opportunity to be successful,” Parrott said in an interview with the Washington Post.
But Parrott did more than be the first to create these diverse emojis. On top of introducing five different skin tones, Parrott incorporated more gender-neutral, biracial, couple-oriented, and family-oriented emoji options.
Parrott even incorporated a variety of hairstyles-such as space buns, box braids, and locs-and different textures of black hair into her emojis. Parrott also included diverse handshakes and gestures such as the fist bump and high-fives, all of which came in pairings of different skin tones, an obvious nod towards unity.
Examples of iDiversicons emojis featuring diverse skin tones and hairstyles.
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In May 2014, Parrott went to Silicon Valley and gave a presentation about iDiversicons® to the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit corporation that sets the digital standards for consistent encoding of the world writings systems (fonts). The Unicode Consortium invited her to present her product to big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Afterwards, a senior software engineer with Apple invited Parrott to present her idea to a senior staff member at Apple Headquarters. After a third meeting with Unicode members, Parrott was contacted with unexpected news.
Parrott was disappointed, but her contributions to Apple, Unicode, and other tech giants did not end in October 2014. In 2015, Apple released their own racially diverse emojis on iOS 8.3, approximately two years after the invention of Parrott’s iDiversicons®.
This prompted Parrott’s company, Cub Club Investment (CCI), the developer of iDiversicons®, to file a lawsuit in 2020. CCI believed that iDiversicons’® intellectual property had been taken by Apple. After some debate about copyright standards and whether this case qualified as copyright infringement, Judge Vince Chhabria of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the case.
Despite the challenges she encountered and the dismissed lawsuit, Parrott’s product has been a model. Parrott notes that, “Apple and Unicode decided on five skin tones like iDiversicons’® five skin tones.” In addition, Parrott shares that although she wasn’t credited for her ideas, company leaders felt her feedback was “so valuable on diversity” that they continued to request it.
More importantly, however, Parrott has focused on advancing the iDiversicons® suite. In 2020, Parrott and her team released diverse handwashing emojis in her five-skin tone range, a face mask, and the Coronavirus cell to promote safety guidelines amidst the Coronavirus pandemic.
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As a program manager at NASA, with an accomplished career in the aerospace industry, Parrott’s experience in managing and negotiating multimillion dollar programs catalyzed her decision to start iDiversicons® and design the first set of representative emojis. Trailblazing this innovation, Parrott has served as an example for how design can galvanize diversity and inclusion efforts through visual strategy.
Parrott’s story also exemplifies the systematic erasure of the groundwork of Black innovators. In Parrott’s case, despite her battle against infringement, her idea for diverse emojis has been adopted as an industry standard.
Beyond Skin Tone: Cultural Authenticity
“Digital representation is more than just images on a screen,” explains Dr. Safiya Noble, author of “Algorithms of Oppression.” “It’s about acknowledging and validating diverse experiences in spaces where we increasingly live our lives.
The ‘BLKmojis‘ collection goes beyond skin tone variations. It incorporates expressions and symbols that are intrinsic to Black culture. Nigerian designer Wale Adeyeye, who was chosen to create these emojis, emphasizes the importance of cultural authenticity in design.
“Each emoji is a story, a piece of our collective narrative,” Adeyeye notes. The introduction of culturally specific emojis has far-reaching implications for digital communication. Dr. “When we diversify our digital language, we create more inclusive online spaces.
The significance of these culturally relevant emojis extends beyond mere representation. They serve as digital artifacts, preserving and promoting aspects of Black culture in an increasingly digital world. Dr. Kimberly McNair, a cultural anthropologist, points out, “These emojis are not just tools for communication; they’re a form of cultural preservation.
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Just in time for Black History Month, there's a new app with some pretty cool afrocentric emojis. Apple recently diversified its emoji offerings, but Afro Emoji speaks specifically to African culture. Afro Emoji even provides a guide to the unique lexicon of expressions.
"We, as Africans, definitely have an idiosyncratic way of communicating with one another, and Afro Emoji is really a fun, accessible graphic depiction of that. We are building a modern African hieroglyph that represents us," Ayoola Daramola, the app's team leader told Okay Africa.
Examples of Afro Emojis, reflecting African culture and expressions.
The Ongoing Quest for Representation
Out of 3,790 existing emojis, not a single one represents Black or mixed-race hairstyles. This week, Dove and U.K.-based nonprofit RISE.365 renewed the call to introduce four new emojis that showcase textured hairstyles featuring locs, braids, cornrows, and afros.
As a result, 57% of Black people report feeling undervalued due to this lack of representation, perceiving their identity as less important. “Emojis are not just symbols; they influence how we see ourselves and each other,” said Joycelyn Buffong, founder and CEO of RISE.365, in a press release.
“For too long, Black people have been excluded from digital representation, reinforcing the idea that our features and identities are an afterthought. Dove’s digital campaign with RISE.365 builds on the CROWN Coalition’s ongoing advocacy to expand beauty representation, including their support of the Crown Act.
RISE. 365’s young leaders designed the four proposed emojis- and just like with other current emojis, you would be able to use the hairstyles with different skin tones. The goal of the #CodeMyCrown campaign is to apply public pressure on the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit responsible for recommending new emoji characters.
While we’ve seen emojis come in more diverse skin tones and even feature Latine cultural staples like a tamal, piñata, and yerba mate, the lack of representation in our online communication has real-world consequences. More than two-thirds of Black people say they use emojis to represent their identity, physical characteristics, and culture.
Global Perspectives on Emoji Design
O'Plerou Grebet is a 22-year-old graphic design student in Ivory Coast. Everywhere he looks, he sees signs of Western influence - from the glass skyscrapers and malls lining the streets in his home city of Abidjan to the way his peers spoke and dressed.
"We are living like we're Western people," he says. "It's like we are not proud of our own culture." That even applies to the symbols he texts to friends using the messaging apps on his phone (they especially love to use the "tears of joy" face emoji, he says).
So he used his design skills to create digital stickers that depict what he thinks is missing from global keyboard culture: symbols of history and daily life in Ivory Coast and neighboring countries. In 2018, he released a free pack of over 360 stickers in a mobile app called "Zouzoukwa," which means "image" in the local Bété language.
Available on Android and iPhone, it now has over 120,000 downloads. People can use the stickers on their phones like emoji. The icons reflect life and culture in Ivory Coast and the surrounding region. They include traditional masks, African instruments like the djembe drum (a goblet-shaped hand drum) and people clad in a variety of prints, fabrics and clothing that reflect regional heritage.
There are also everyday objects: cans of soda, cubes of bouillon (a key ingredient in many African dishes) and popular types of chips and candy. Some of his favorite designs are a series of facial expressions commonly used in his region, but not available as a standard emoji.
There's a woman with lips pursed, giving some serious side-eye - a sign of annoyance that's common in Ivory Coast but also translates across cultures. There's a guy with his index finger pulling down his bottom eyelid - it means "I told you so" in Ivory Coast, Grebet says.
"They are expressions we often use in real life, but they were not represented in our phones," Grebet says. A next step, Grebet says, is to try and get some of his designs into the official emoji set, where they'd reach more than 2 billion people worldwide, as standardized symbols on smartphones everywhere.
Examples of Zouzoukwa emojis reflecting daily life and culture in Ivory Coast.
Jennifer 8. Lee is cofounder of Emojination, a nonprofit emoji advocacy group that shepherds designs through the process of becoming part of the set of official emoji that come standard on phone keyboards. The group has helped get specialized emoji from diverse groups, such as the dumpling, approved.
She's also vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, which vets emoji proposals for inclusion. Lee says she looks for designs that are specific to a culture but universal enough that there's a wide demand. She's consulted with Grebet about putting up a few of his designs for candidacy. She thinks foufou, a starchy paste made with mashed plantains, is particularly promising because it's a staple of many African cuisines.
"What rice and bread and noodles are to certain parts of the world, foufou is to certain parts of Africa," she says. In the meantime, Grebet has submitted the "I told you so" expression to the Unicode committee.
Lee says emoji is a common language for today's global youth. "We always talk about representation the big screen," she says. "Representation on the small screen is also really important because it tells you what exists and what is important in the world."
Seeing icons for a hijab, an arepa, or an interracial couple, she says, establishes these realities as norms in the world. Grebet plans to keep traveling and expanding his experiences - and his sticker pack. His designs so far are drawn from his experience and research into a few African countries.
The Nuances of Emoji Usage
When Apple first unveiled different skin tones for emoji, it was a big deal. It meant that people of color could finally choose emoji that represented us, or at least it's closer until there's a way to provide a spectrum of shades to match everyone.
Though these were released with diversity in mind, Unicode Consortium, the company behind emoji designs, is fully aware of the fact that not everyone will be represented through the five skin tones, which are not based on race at all, a spokesperson tells Refinery29. Instead, the colors were chosen using the Fitzpatrick scale, which is a dermatological scale of tone.
Though the intent was to represent more people, the way it plays out in real life - such as my interaction with my white friend - is not very comfortable at all. Cultural appropriation in certain directions are never comfortable anyway - and while emoji co-opting may not always exactly be cultural appropriation, they do share some elements (e.g. using an aspect of someone’s cultural identity however you please, without due respect).
And in this case, a lighter skinned person using a darker emoji can be uncomfortable, whereas the reverse might not be true. In the same way that reverse racism isn’t really a thing, a darker skinned person using a light emoji might be weird, but the concepts of systemic disenfranchisement don’t really come into play in the same way.
Emoji selection may feel like a frivolous topic in light of serious racial violence going on in the world. It's a digital microaggression, and it is a part of how we talk about and interact with race on a daily basis. There’s a term for this: digital blackface, or as Laur M. Jackson described in an article for The Awl in 2014, “non-Black people making anonymous claims to a Black identity through contemporary technological mediums, such as social media."
People have also been known to use GIFs that don’t correspond to their race - though that’s a little different. (While it can be argued that GIFs simply capture an essence that you’re trying to portray, emoji are much less ambiguous.)
Maybe the mere fact that we have to select a race in emoji usage is what's awkward. Heath Racela identifies as three-quarters white and one-quarter Filipino. When texting, he chooses a yellow emoji instead of a skin tone option, because he feels it doesn't represent any specific ethnicity or color.
He doesn't want people to view his texts in a particular way. He wants to go with what he sees as the neutral option and focus on the message. "I present as very pale, very light skinned. And if I use the white emoji, I feel like I'm betraying the part of myself that's Filipino," Racela, of Littleton, Mass., said.
In 2015, five skin tone options became available for hand gesture emojis, in addition to the default Simpsons-like yellow. Choosing one can be a simple texting shortcut for some, but for others it opens a complex conversation about race and identity.
