MyriaCore
commented
4 years ago This is well reasoned and all, but I guess this is a "capture the photograph of the photograph" thing. While it isn't 100% accurate, we know what people mean. Still, it's an interesting proposal for sure :thinking:
robinsonkwame
This issue is consistent across hand emojis from most libraries (except for LG G5). In particular, I'm talking about the several hand emojis that show the hand palms of dark skinned people, including but not limited to:
🤲🏿 palms up together (U+1F932) 👋🏿 waving hand (U+1F44B) ✋🏿 raised hand (U+270B) 👐🏿 open hands (U+1F450) 🙌🏿 raised hands (U+1F64C)
In reality, the skin color of the hand palms of people with dark skin is usually not as dark as the back of their hands; for most people it's much lighter, ie. there is typically less melanin on the palms compared to the backs of their hands. Just google "hand palm Black person" or see this photo: https://twitter.com/actionhankbeard/status/953304056126148611/photo/1.
The current twemoji set for palm-facing hands suggests that all people's hand palms are supposedly the same color as the rest of their skin. I recognize that emojis don't have to be exactly photorealistic, but being a medium-dark skinned person myself I must say it looks very wrong, especially for dark skin tone (U+1F3FF).
I think it plays into a common misconception about skin color (see also https://twitter.com/MakeupForWOC/status/1027365468313739264). It would really help if we could update these emojis to better reflect what hand palm pigmentation looks like in real life for Black and Brown people. I think addressing this will give us the opportunity to remove another source of (unintended) bias in tech.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks! ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿