Of the over 800 Emojis there's a lack of minority representation, so says Miley Cyrus, Tahj Mowry and MTV's Act's Joey Parker
So the tech world has come to this - the apparent lack of diversity in emoticons is causing a stir, led by, of all people, Miley Cyrus. The controversial pop star has put down her foam finger and has been tweeting her disappointment over what she claims is a lack of minority representation on the emoji front.
After MTV Act's Joey Parker got in on the act with a recent email to Apple's Tim Cook about the controversy the clock began ticking on a response and Apple quickly vowed to update its emoji character collection in all iOS-based devices. Of the over 800 emojis that currently exist, only a handful reflect any kind of ethnic diversity with Chinese, Russian and Indian cultures represented in various ways.
The official response to Parker from Apple's public relations guru Katie Cotton was:
"Tim forwarded your email to me. We agree with you. Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms," she said. "There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."
While no one appears to be arguing that racial diversity in the emoticon world is a bad idea, at least one observer wasn't aware the little yellow smiley faces represented any particular culture or ethnicity ...just emotions.
"I didn't realize that the yellow faces reflected any culture other than a generic one that simply aimed to convey an emotion, not a specific ethnic emotion," explained CE marketing consultant Martha Refik. "Clearly this put Apple in a lose, lose scenario so I understand their response but I think this is about as silly a controversy as there is right now. Who decided the current set of little faces were Caucasian?"
The current set of Apple emojis also includes foods, plants and various symbols along with the wide range of emotions conveyed via the circular faces. The whole notion of Emojis originated in Japan and they were later incorporated into Unicode, which made them available on the various platforms, as Cotton explained in her email.
A specific release date for the new emoticons has not been announced but the feeling is Apple will want this little bump in the road to disappear quickly so many observers feel an announcement could be made at the company's upcoming June Developers Conference when Apple is expected to unveil iOS 8.
