Emoji gods approve skin-tone options for couples of color
NEW YORK — In 1664, Maryland passed the first British colonial law banning marriage between whites and slaves. An 1883 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that state prohibitions on interracial marriage don’t violate the Fourteenth Amendment held for more than 80 years.
While such impediments to marriage were both dismantled over time, there are still some hurdles, however small, to overcome. In 2019, interracial couples have a small victory to celebrate: The approval of 71 new variations of couples in emojis of color.
Capping a yearlong project thought up by the folks at the swipe-right dating app Tinder, the emoji gods (known as the Unicode Consortium) recently approved the additions to emojis technically referred to as two folks “holding hands.” A new “genderinclusive” couple emoji was also approved among 230 new characters.
Until now, emojis of two or more people on various platforms and devices have been available only in the default yellow. While the Unicode Consortium, where Google, Microsoft and Apple have voting seats, signed off on the skin-tone additions, companies will decide for themselves starting later this year whether to add them and how they will look.
Jenny Campbell, the chief marketing officer for Tinder, isn’t worried about distribution after the company mounted a campaign and petition drive in support of the inclusive technical proposal it submitted to Unicode.
“Ultimately, we wanted to get the interracial emoji couple on people’s keyboards not only for equality, but also to spread acceptance for all couples no matter what their race,” she said on Thursday.
While facial features and hair textures are yet to be determined by some vendors, Tinder said the use of six existing skin tones already available for oneperson emojis and various others using human parts is a step in the right direction at a time when the little pictographs remain a readily accessible way for the world to express itself. The lack of color options, the company said, felt like a slight to interracial couples.
“Even as our social behaviors have evolved and interracial dating and marriage has become more prevalent, visual representation of these relationships in technology has lagged far behind,” Campbell said.
Emojis of single people of color and same-sex couples were added in the last several years, but not in mixed-tone combinations. In real life, the rate of interracial marriage has increased over the years, especially since the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia that struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in 16 states. But such marriages remain a small portion of marriages overall.
Tinder is taking credit for its industry in pushing interracial dating along, citing data that indicate couples who meet online are more likely to be interracial than those who don’t.
Skin tones for limited use were added to the Unicode Standard in 2015. More representation of women in 2016, some “gender-inclusive” people in 2017 and hair color options last year. Also approved this year: A waffle, a muchrequested white heart, a guide dog and people in wheelchairs. Oh, and a sloth.