Finally, diverse emojis are coming!

By Fusion Staff  |  February 23, 2015 | 10:09pm
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iPhone users, rejoice! Unicode (the company behind the super addictive emoji keyboard) is finally answering all of our prayers and giving us a preview of the upcoming emojis, complete with diverse skin tones (so no more using the creepy moon to symbolize a black person ):

This update is a long time coming. Emoji fans have been complaining about the lack of diversity for years and SNL even chimed in on the extremely white set of characters in this bit on Weekend Update:

To use the new diverse emojis (available to developers for OS X 10.10.3 and iOS 8.3 beta 2), you simply hold down a person emoji, and get a palette of faces to choose from:

Now almost everyone (even people with severe jaundice) is represented in this colorful palette. We’re glad to see the world of emoji being more inclusive, even for fictional characters:

Another progressive update to the text keyboard is a bevy of family options beyond the basic nuclear family of before:

Users can now select families with many different compositions — two mothers and a son, two fathers and a daughter, a man and woman with no children — It may not seem like much, but representation matters (even in something as lighthearted as emojis).

There’s no telling when exactly casual iPhone users will receive the iOS 8.3 update, but Apple is reportedly planning a public beta program which will kick off in mid-March.

via The Next Web

Akilah Hughes is a comedian, YouTuber, and staff writer and producer for Fusion’s culture section. You can almost always find her waxing poetic about memes and using too many emojis.

 
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