Forget 50 shades of grey, this week it’s all about five shades of skin as Apple’s racially diverse emojis have finally arrived. Reacting to complaints about the lack of racial diversity across the emoji character keyboard (there were previously only three non-white emojis representing the entirety of the Non-Western world) software standard regulator Unicode Consortium has redesigned the Apple keyboard by introducing skin tone modifiers, based on the dermatologically approved Fitzpatrick scale. This means all human emojis will now come in the generic ”jaundiced” yellow with the added option of five different skin tones, because not everyone in the world with a phone is Caucasian. So wave goodbye to racial homogeneity, and say hello to your beautiful Black princesses and angelic Asian cherubs. Even the Chinese man in the skull cap will be getting a Caucasian make-over, all in the name of racial equality. Racial diversity is here; iPhone holders of the world, rejoice! Now let’s hope we see the same thing happen in real life.
In other news same sex marriage emojis and 32 flags will also get some air-time in the newly updated, 300-strong keyboard. Hooray!