Apple To Release Multi-Racial Emojis Square
Apple iPhone and iPad users will soon be able to express themselves through emoji characters and symbols that aren't uniformly caucasian.
On Monday Apple released an early beta version of its Mac OS X and iOS operating systems, which features the ability to type using emjoi symbols that depict a wide variety of skin colors. 9to5mac originally reported the new digital diversity, and alleges that users will soon be able to choose any emoji that depicts a person, hold down on the keyboard, and then choose between multiple races for each symbol.
As far back as a year ago it was reported that Apple was updating its code to include non-white emoji symbols, and yesterday the company confirmed that the early screenshots are in fact authentic. The new move towards a more diverse population of symbols in the world's texts, tweets, status updates, and even URL codes has been a long time coming.
Okayafrica reported on the new emojis yesterday and rightly noted that black emojis, at least, have been available for some time now via third party developers. In April 2014 the Mauritius-based app company Oju Africa rolled out 65 "Afro Emoticons" depicting a multitude of characters and with skin that carried plenty of melanin. Read more about how to get the Oju Africa emojis right now and the history of black emojis over at Okayafrica.
