The day we have all been waiting for has arrived. New black emojis are available to iPhone users.
The iOS 8.3 update from Apple includes at least 300 new emojis with several being shades of brown to represent African-Americans.
The release was tested in February, but most people did not think it would appear so soon. The variety of skin tones definitely was a shock to many iPhone users.
The new emoji characters have six different skin tones and are based on the Fitzpatrick Classification scale, founded by dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick at Harvard Medical School in 1975.
Tyra Brown, a third-year pre-physical therapy student, felt the update is something that should've been done sooner because of the diversity in the world.
“I don’t think Apple thought of that [adding black emojis] until people brought it up as something that they wanted,” Brown said.
Lauren Saint Vil, a senior editing, writing and media student at Florida State University, agreed with Brown.
“It is sad that it took so long for this representation. Before the update, the default color for a person emoji was white, which shows how our society thinks when it comes to skin color,” Saint Vil said.
For those Apple users who have not updated their Apple products, the darker-toned emojis will pop up as an alien head in a white box. Many Apple users are highly offended by this and feel forced to update their phones due to this error.
Hopefully these emojis satisfy African-American Apple users and allow them to enjoy this new life with African-American emojis.