I have some friends who use the brown emojis, too, but they are not brown themselves. This confuses me. (clip)
Support the show for $3.11/mo at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult and get a bonus episode every week, as well as instant access to hundreds of hours of derranged bonus content This week: A new definition of WE LIVE IN A REPUBLIC NOT A DEMOCRACY drops Some of the best and most sensible reactions to the NFL halftime show And an NPR article, sure to make no one happy, that explores the cowardice of white people hiding behind yellow hand emojis such as when Culture Abuse filliped off Tony on twitter
I also wish there were like a slightly more dark white, like an Italian thumbs up.
The technology exists where we should be able to slide it.
We should be able to like a slide, you know?
Or we should be able to like just you should have to take a picture of your arm and that's what that's the tone it uses.
Yeah, you should use face ID to pick your emoji color.
It's gonna be all weird when like when like people who do like online blackface are trying to take pictures of black people's like skin when they're walking by and trying to get that sample.
But it only correlates, it has to correlate with your face ID.
That's what it is.
It's your face ID recognition that correlates to your emoji.
Yeah, you better turn that ring light brightness down if you don't want the fucking ghost color on there.
I will for sure be doing that.
Quote, I present as very pale very light-skinned and again, like you shouldn't have to say any of this about yourself Yeah, like at all you should I should know it in the emoji you sent me And if I use the white emoji, I feel like I'm betraying the part of myself.
That's Filipino Rosella of Littleton mass says yeah, it's almost like race is based on nonsense.
Yep.
It's almost like the idea of race is fucking wholly manufactured Yeah, absolutely.
You should use the white emoji and just put a little accent on it.
Like a little dash on top.
Yeah, I don't know.
What's the Filipino equivalent of an N yet?
I don't know.
All it is, it's the white emoji, but then a little tiny in parentheses P for passing.
It's just white passing.
See, I was thinking you could get, like, you should, like, you should have to petition for it, like you said, Tony.
Maybe not through, like, Face ID or whatever, but, like, you submit an application with, like, you know, your family tree.
You do a 23andMe or something, and you send the results to Apple, and then they give you access to a special checkerboard thumbs up emoji.
Damn, that sounds awesome.
Or you could have like a slightly brown, slightly browner and then slightly whiter like pattern.
Yeah, kind of a kind of a range, yeah.
And you could, part of the survey is a box you can check where it says like, white, but grew up with lots of black friends in a poor neighborhood.
So do I get the, do I get to You don't get the black thumbs up, but you do get to use the clapping emoji all you want.
And you get access to the full library of GIFs no matter what skin color you're using.
Can they stop auto-correcting when I try to type out the n-word?
It auto-corrects all the time.
I think it thinks that I'm just a white guy when they don't know that I come from it.
What's it auto-correcting to?
The hard R?
I keep losing friends left and right because they think that... So I try to put an H at the end of it, so... I don't know what I'd do if one of my boyfriends said... I'd find a word?
Word?
Wanna go ahead and run that back?
Uh, can you Google how to unsend an iMessage?
Yeah.
Oh, if that was a real thing.
How many lives would be different?
How many lives would just be completely different?
It's a real sliding doors situation.
It really is.
It really is.
You can't look back though.
You can't look back.
You just gotta look forward.
You know, you just gotta look forward to not sending an iMessage.
Quote, I use the brown one that matches me, said Sarai Cole, an opera singer in Germany.
Quote, I have some friends who use the brown ones too, but they are not brown themselves.
This confuses me.
This is real fucking weird.
So before I, there's an explanation to this, by the way, which I was not expecting to get.
Not at all.
And I'm so fucking happy we got it.
But I see that all the time on Facebook.
I see, like, obviously white people using the brown or black thumbs-up emoji, and I will, without hesitation, say, oh, they're just confused.
They don't know how to change it back.
They just think it's a type of, like, emoji.
Yeah.
It's just like, here's the thumbs-up hand.
I don't fucking know.
Well, that's because you didn't feel what I feel when I see a white person, um, uh, you know, uh, using a brown emoji, which is like safety.
And, you know, like, um, uh, I know that I, I'm okay.
Cause I know that, I know that they're here for me.
I know they're ready.
I know that if, if that was a situation where I have a gun pulled on me, they will go ahead and, and, and paint their face right there and also do something, make noises, try to get, try to distract.
And I like that.
That makes me feel good.
I know I have allies.
What if it was like, you know you do the thumbs up emoji like sarcastically, like yeah sure man.
Yeah.
You know you do that?
What if it's like even more sarcastic when you do a different ethnicity thumbs up?
Like I mean this even less.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean this about like the amount that I respect this shade of skin.
That's how much I mean it.
This is how cool we are.
Cole is originally from California and identifies as black and American descendant of slavery.
She said that while she was not offended when a non-brown friend used a dark emoji, she would like to understand why.
Yes, that would be great.
I mean, that's kind of like, you know, that's what that's the premise of Meaning Death Coals, understanding, trying to understand what these people are doing, you know.
But Zara Rahman, A researcher and writer in Berlin argues that the skin tone emojis make white people confront their race, as people of color often have to do.
For example, she shared Sarai Cole's confusion when someone who is white uses a brown emoji, so she asked some friends about it.
One friend who is white told me that it was because he felt that white people were overrepresented in the space that he was using the emoji, so he wanted to kind of try and even the playing field.
Yep.
I just kinda wanna speak up.
I wanna speak for the voiceless, you know?
I do gotta say, I don't know what it says about me, but I am a little curious about... This is maybe why it's not important.
Because I am curious what type of emojis Zara Ramen uses.
Because I just don't know.
I'm curious.
And maybe that is a problem.
Because I shouldn't maybe worry about what type of emojis Zahra Rahman uses.
I love this, like... I'm gonna be charitable and say, like, well-meaning white person.
I love this, like, well-meaning white person who's like, you know what?
There's too many white voices on this phone call, so I'm gonna lower my...
