(This innocent-looking emoji has the power to determine whether you are an enlightened member of modern society or a vile, narrow-minded racist)
A GROUNDBREAKING NEW study conducted by the South African Race Institute of Acute Sensitivity (SARIAS) reveals that astonishing conclusions can be drawn about an individual from the colour of an emoji they choose to employ when sending a text message.
The whimsical pictographs, also known as emoticons, are a ubiquitous feature of social media where they are primarily used to communicate fun, frivolous feelings among users. However, in the many instances where one’s device allows one to choose the skin colour of an emoji, matters take a decidedly more serious turn.
According to Dr Nkosazana Ramsbottom, one of the lead researchers on the study, much can be read into the psychology, ideology and political philosophy of a user depending upon what epidermal tone he or she decides to accord his or her emoji. ‘Of the many emojis where there is an option to select skin colour – predominantly in the hand signal category such as the “thumbs-up” – the colour selected by the user throws an incandescent light upon their level of racial sensitivity,’ she said in the preface to the report, recently published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
The exhaustive study, based upon unimpeachable empirical data and scrupulous epistemological rigour, cites results of a particular triple-blind test which incontrovertibly supports its findings. Here it was discovered that if a black person selects the darkest available hue for a hand-sign emoji they are possessed of a deep sense of pride in their ethnicity and are tremendously comfortable with their racial identity. In addition, a black person who selects a white hand is further imbued with a well-developed sense of irony which further reflects how secure they are in who they are.
On the other hand (no puns here; this is science), the experiment revealed the fundamental insecurity, ignorance and/or prejudice of white people. A white person who chooses a hand with white skin is incontrovertibly a racist. They take perverse pride in their whiteness and are invariably white supremacists. White people who used a black hand, however, were either an even more primitive form of racist – the kind that thinks ‘blackface’ is funny – or, worse, a deluded liberal engaged in a pathetic attempt to signal their solidarity with their black ‘brethren’, the last of whom they actually met in person was a guy called Petros from ADT who came to fix the radio transmitter of their alarm system. Those white people who opted for the race-neutral bright yellow – the emoji’s default colour – were either a slightly different strain of liberal whose magical thinking allowed them to convince themselves they ‘transcended race’ or a simply bunch of cowards too terrified of getting sucked into the discourse of race relations in contemporary South Africa.
Dr Ramsbottom went on to note that soon employers would heed the study’s findings and scour the social media channels of applicants for suspicious emoji use. In order to be best prepared for such a scenario, she recommended that black people should ‘knock themselves out’ while white people were cautioned to stick to hearts, unicorns and birthday cakes. Bethany BlancDeBlanc, of a leading employment agency, confirmed this prediction. ‘Oh definitely,’ she stated. ‘This is going to revolutionise the working environment. And if a white guy uses the eggplant emoji, he better have the goods to back it up.’
