Emoji To Include Skin Tone Modifier For Racial Diversity. Is This Really Necessary? [POLL]

And you thought Emojis were universal? Think again! Some guidelines have suggested that the emoticons should be as neutral as possible when it comes to race, gender and ethnicity. The Unicode Consortium has released a technical report on how the skin tone adjustment would work. Essentially, if the character calls for a specific skin tone like a man with a turban, or is gender-specific like a princess, they should stay as is. If not, there will be a way to switch the skin tone of each icon to every user’s desire.

The project is in draft stages and has just come out for public opinion, but since none of the major platforms support the new Unicode 7.0 emoji characters yet, it is not clear how long the public will have to wait to see Unicode 8.0 updates including this new feature.

Earlier this year, MTV expressed concerns about the exclusion the little icons presented and sent a letter to Apple to which then-Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Communications, Katie Cotton replied: “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. 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 we think opening up to racial, gender and ethnic diversity is always a great thing, we can’t help but feeling like this is being taken a little too far. Vote and tell us how you really feel about this!