In 2018, researchers at the University of Edinburgh published a study looking at the use of race-based emoji, the digital characters people use in texting. For the longest time, emoji were all uniformly yellow. In 2015, software updates across platforms allowed individuals to choose their color preference to match one of five skin tones in addition to the default yellow.
It is important to get the timeline right here. The emoji changes came in 2015. The Atlantic published a short piece in 2016 on white people sticking with the yellow defaults. The Edinburgh research study came in 2018. The American presidential election came in 2020. National Public Radio, which bragged about ignoring the Hunter Biden story in 2020, only just decided to report on the 2018 research and linked to the 2016 Atlantic piece. Perhaps sometime in 2040, they will get around to reporting on Hunter Biden’s deals with China and use of crack cocaine.
According to NPR’s report, “some white people may stick with the yellow emoji because they don’t want to assert their privilege by adding a light-skinned emoji to a text, or to take advantage of something that was created to represent diversity.” One of the researchers involved in the 2018 study told NPR, “There was a default in society to associate whiteness with being raceless, and the emojis gave white people an option to make their race explicit.”
The entirety of National Public Radio’s story, the original research, and the outrage is the height of self-centered ridiculousness. People in the present age quest for things about which to judge others and criticize. Now, keeping the default emoji color is a sign of white privilege. It could just be a sign of not caring.
The presumption in the piece is that nonwhite people embraced the use of racial emoji. Ironically, in the actual research paper, the researchers note that “T6,” which is the darkest skin tone, is the least used emoji color, even in African nations. Also, the United States has the most even distribution between skin tones. It is important to note that the researchers only used Twitter and its tweets, so they have no actual idea how many people use race-based emoji in their private text messages. Most importantly, most people still use the default yellow, regardless of race.
People who obsess over race-based emoji are uniquely parasitic on society. They glom on to the outrage machine and find race and racial issues wherever they can. They, based on their own biases and presuppositions, assume others must care as much about race as they do and a choice to stick to a default is a presumption of privilege. It could be that most people do not care.
Unfortunately, to say people do not care is, for the parasitic racial grifters of America, a presumption of privilege. It is an unfalsifiable notion that only people who care deeply about race believe. But not only do they believe it dearly, they expect everyone else to believe it too. They have invaded so many aspects of society and polluted major media outlets with a race-based obsession not seen outside Alabama in the mid-1960s.
These Neo-racists who see race everywhere, obsess about race and condemn those not obsessed about race are the very same people who tend to oppose allowing black children to leave public schools. They are the same people who push critical race theory in schools to indoctrinate minority students that they are oppressed and the white students are oppressors. Instead of seeking racial reconciliation, they seek division. Without the division they could not profit nor generate silly clickbait.
In 2020, National Public Radio not only bragged about refusing to cover the story of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, but the network also criticized those outlets that chose to cover the story. The story turned out to be true. Two years later, NPR can find the time to engage in racial grifting off a four-year-old story. Why must my tax dollars pay for NPR’s racial obsessions?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
The Daily Wire’s first original film, Shut In, has made its cinematic debut, being met with rave reviews. The Daily Wire is building an alternative to the leftist entertainment industry, one gripping movie at a time. Join us in this mission and stream Shut In today by becoming a Daily Wire member.