NPR says using yellow emojis on Slack shows a lack of awareness about white privilege

Do you consider the color of the emoji you're using in your professional work messaging space like Slack, Teams, or Google Chat? If not, you may want to.

An article from NPR is exploring how people feel about using emojis that correlate to their race in work settings and the general consensus seems to be that white people are hiding their privilege behind the yellow neutral emoji.

Zara Rahman, a writer and researcher in Berlin, told NPR: "One friend who is white told me that it was because he felt that white people were overrepresented in the space that he was using the emoji, so he wanted to kind of try and even the playing field. For me, it does signal a kind of a lack of awareness of your white privilege in many ways."

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The article is encouraging white people to consider how using the yellow emoji tone may affect people of color.

Rahman explained to NPR that as a society we default whiteness with being raceless which puts the responsibility to inform, educate, and advocate on people of color.

Rahman says wants people to consider their use of emojis and how it represents their identity.

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