Asians angered by Apple's 'racist' yellow emoji

25.02.2015 15:25

In an effort to better represent society, Apple has revealed a new set of globally diverse emoji that will come in six different skin tones.

The tones include an option that turns a character yellow - a shade that the the Cupertino-based company says it intended to be ethnically neutral.

But the colour has angered some Apple users, particularly those in China, who claim that the yellow tone is offensive to Asians.

Many took to Twitter to voice their concerns with one user, Jade Tran, writing: 'Is the yellow emoji suppose to represent Asians because I have never in my life seen an Asian lookin like that.'

Another user, Taylor Wofford, tweeted: 'It look like it has colic.' Apple has not yet responded to DailyMail.com about the issue.

The move could damage Apple's reputation in one of its leading markets. The group doubled its sales in China last year, while Samsung has been losing market share.

Leaked images of Apple's new emoji also show a wider range of country flags under the Travel and Places tab, with this emoji set now including flags from 32 countries.

A set of new emoji characters will also be unveiled, including racially diverse families and same-sex families, according to The Next Web.

The new emoj are being trialled on OS X 10.10.3 and iOS 8.3 beta 2.

The skin tone options will be accessible by tapping and holding the emoji. A pop up menu will then appear giving the user six different skin colour options.

Previously, the list of characters contained dozens of faces of people that appear to be white. However, only two of the symbols seem to be Asian and none are black.

Last year, Apple revealed it was working to expand the diversity of the hugely popular emoji characters for the iPhone.

Following complaints that the current character set was not diverse enough, the firm said it was working with the standards body that controls them.

Because emoji have to be displayed on different devices, they are tightly controlled by the Unicode Consortium.

The disclosure came after Apple boss Tim Cook was emailed asking if the firm was going to address the issue.

Apple's Katie Cotton, who was the head of communications at the firm at the time, replied, telling MTV: 'Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you.

'Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms.

'There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard.'

The diversity of emoji was also questioned in a petition posted to DoSomething.org calling on Apple to increase the ethnic diversity found within its emoji keyboard.

'Of the more than 800 Emoji, the only two resembling people of color are a guy who looks vaguely Asian and another in a turban,' it says.

'There's a white boy, girl, man, woman, elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we're pretty sure, [video game character] Princess Peach.'

A petition suggested that emoji like these could be added to Apple's keyboard.

'But when it comes to faces outside of yellow smileys, there's a staggering lack of minority representation.'

It added that the keyboard already offered a graphic showing a same-sex couple, and called on the company to present people with a wider range of skin tones.

(dailymail.co.uk)

ANN.Az

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