Each can be interpreted as a considerate choice or a careless one depending on how you frame the argument and support your position.Īs observed in a recent New York Times article, emojis are not morally neutral symbols. Just because I possessed an informed rationale did not imply that others were excluded from having their own informed rationale. But when the subject of the ethnicity of emojis came up in a recent conversation, I wondered if I was prepared to defend my choice to use a brown emoji thumbs-up and to explain why it mattered. Just as folks are bewildered when my rosy-cheeked Canadian friend orders dinner in impeccable Mandarin, also do they demonstrate an implicit assumption about my lack of knowledge about or interest in African American culture.
What you can't tell is that I am the author of a body of scholarship on African American religions and literature, have curated several shows of African American art, edited books on and taught courses on African American topics.
As you can easily see from my Huffington Post profile, I am an average-looking, middle-aged, white female academic teaching aspiring capitalists in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco.
