Issac Newton was wandering around in the garden and sat under the ‘tree of knowledge’. Suddenly drops on his head the forbidden apple and he exclaims “THINK DIFFERENT , Let me come up with new diverse emoticons”. Emoticons, are a representation of a facial expression such as a smile or frown, formed by various combinations of keyboard characters and used in electronic communications to convey the writer’s feelings or intended one.
Dear Apple. Please read the definition of Emoticons again. Its aim is to CONVEY THE WRITER’S EMOTIONS.
THE NEW EMOJI UPDATE BY APPLE
Apple (AAPL, Tech30) VOWED to increase the diversity in its emojis keyboard last March, after there was a public outcry over the limited options for people of color. A petition at Dosomething.org collected thousands of signatures. Many celebrities including Miley Cyrus even tweeted about it, helping it to go viral on Twitter. And now Apple has come up with a diverse range of emojis with which people can actually ‘relate’. The emojis show people of different colors – white, black and different tones of it.
When you look at these emoticons you don’t see the UNITY in diversity. Rather, you can just see THE DIVERSITY. Is it really helping people to relate to, when they see 10 other people who belong to a different color? There are many movements and celebrities who are supporting this, but the truth is they need to see what disturbance it can cause to the ‘other’ who have been subjugated by the dominant group since time immemorial.
Jaques Derrida in his essay on the DECONSTRUCTION of the binaries(composed of two pieces or two parts) talks about the need to decentre the centre. For Example: Dividing the society into males and females, whites and blacks, capitalist and proletariat, etc. While creating such emoticons, you are in fact making the public conscious of their color and telling them “Use this image because you are a black”.Clearly, Apple is being racist with it’s new diverse emoticons.
“Apple supports and cares deeply about diversity, and is working with The Unicode Consortium to update the standard so that it better represents diversity for all of us.”, said an Apple spokesperson once. Well, they have done it. Congratulations Apple, You have lost the game. People might be thinking that you are great and you are concerned about their feelings. Indeed, you are! Because people will never realize the depths of a hegemony.
THE NEED FOR A NEW EMOTICON
Apple should not become racist under the paradoxical mask of ‘diversity’. We need to deconstruct these binaries and achieve neutrality in a race where we can actually relate to each other through a simple emoticon. We cannot have such racist diversity and we cannot have a universal color for all of us. So what we can have is a Transparent Emoticon which will allow Homogeneity to be established. You can imagine filling in your own color in that transparency and finding your own individuality. So, People’s Apple and Apple’s people – THINK BEFORE YOU THINK YOU ARE NOT BEING PREJUDICED TOWARDS A COLOR.