Heath Racela identifies as three-quarters white and one-quarter Filipino. When texting, he chooses a yellow emoji instead of a skin tone option, because he feels it doesn't represent any specific ...

KHALID: Racela says he usually goes with the yellow emoji because it does it represent any specific ethnicity or skin tone. RACELA: I present is very pale, very light skinned, ...

The common, pre-2016 design for this emoji, a revolver, offered a reasonable take on the matter. That’s because the six-shooter is a good approximation for a generic abstraction of a handgun.

That leaves yellow, the Esperanto of emoji skin tones, which seems to offer an all-purpose or neutral form of pictographic expression, one that does not require an acknowledgment of race—or, for ...

KHALID: Racela says he usually goes with the yellow emoji because it does it represent any specific ethnicity or skin tone. RACELA: I present is very pale, very light skinned, ...