Emoji gods approve skin-tone options for couples of color

Posted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2019-04-02 15:44Z by Steven

Emoji gods approve skin-tone options for couples of color

The Associated Press
2019-03-08

Leanne Itale


This undated illustration provided by Tinder/Emojination shows new variations of interracial emoji couples. In the world of emojis, interracial couples had virtually no options in terms of skin tone. But the emoji gods, otherwise known as the Unicode Consortium, recently rectified that, approving 71 new variations. Using six skin tones already available for one-person emojis, vendors such as Apple, Google and Microsoft will now be able to offer couples of color. Additions are expected later this year. (Tinder/Emojination via AP)

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 dismantled over time, there are still hurdles, however small, to overcome. Here, in 2019, interracial couples have a small victory to celebrate: The approval of 71 new variations of emoji for couples of color.

Capping a yearlong project thought up by, of all people, the folks at the swipe-right dating app Tinder, the emoji gods (known as the Unicode Consortium) recently approved the additions in characters technically referred to as people “holding hands.” A new “gender-inclusive” couple emoji was also approved among 230 new characters.

Until now, emoji 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 technical proposal it submitted to Unicode…

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Artist Turns Racist Flirtations on Tinder Into Compelling Look at Race and Sex

Posted in Articles, Arts, Europe, Interviews, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2016-05-15 16:30Z by Steven

Artist Turns Racist Flirtations on Tinder Into Compelling Look at Race and Sex

The Root
2016-05-13

Demetria Lucas D’Oyley


Phoebe Boswell Source: phoebeboswell.com

She Matters: Inspired by James Baldwin’sStranger in a Village,” Phoebe Boswell was interested in exploring the perceptions of black women in predominantly white spaces.

Over the weekend I swung by the 156 Art Fair, an annual exhibition of African art at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, N.Y. Among the many strong presentations on display, Phoebe Boswell’s Stranger in the Village stood out.

In April 2015 Boswell, a biracial Kenyan woman currently living in London, was temporarily situated in Gothenburg, Sweden, in a predominantly white area. Boswell set out to explore perceptions of race and sex during her stay by turning to dating app Tinder.

“I thought I might want to explore what my body might feel like living in a space that might not be very welcoming,” Boswell says.

Any black woman who has ever ventured online to look for love—a particularly painful place for black women—should be able to predict the worst of what happened to Boswell next. Reactions to Boswell ranged from microaggressions to flat-out racism. But Boswell turned her lemons into artistic lemonade. For her installation, she sketched portraits of her online suitors with a mechanical pencil and included quotes from her exchanges.

“In the space of day, I go back through microaggressions for a month,” Boswell explained. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my God!’ I’m frightened from the things that I see.” Here, she talks about the experiences on Tinder that inspired the project…

Read the entire interview here.

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