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By Kitty Testa
In what only can be described as a bizarre musing, actress Ashley Judd tweeted her wonderment as to why emojis are yellow. She further tweeted that yellow “is just a code for white.”
In under 25 characters, Ms. Judd dismissed the entire Asian population of the world. Most everyone knows that yellow is default for Asian, which a few tweeters pointed out after reading her tweet.
So why is Judd sensitive to blacks but not Asians?
Emojis were invented in Japan, and although I’m not sure how the Japanese or any other Asians feel about yellow being a racial code for all of our oriental brothers and sisters, in the “yellow, red, black and white” code, the yellow refers to Asians. I never understood this concept. Asians don’t look yellow to me, and American Indians don’t look red, either. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who actually looks white or black. But hey, I didn’t make it up. Maybe they meant reddish, yellowish, blackish and whitish.
But emojis aren’t yellowish, they’re bright yellow. Perhaps they are yellow because they are modeled after the original smiley face from the 1970s, which was also bright yellow. I seriously doubt there was any racial intention when Harvey Ball created a smile in a bright yellow circle and turned it into what might be considered the first truly universal meme.
Emojis also look like Pac-Man, who looks to be just a profile of the original smiley face. Should Pac-Man come in other races too?
I’m pretty sure that most people don’t assume that yellow emojis, smiley faces and Pac-Man actually have a race. Now if Ashley Judd wants to virtue signal her racial sensitivity (for non-white and non-Asian people) to the rest of the world, perhaps she can change her yellow emojis to black emojis and then back again—if that makes her feel better. I mean, that is exactly the kind of hard work that needs to be done to promote racial equality and progress.
Surely, it will change the world.
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