By Maya Koeppen ‘17

Over the years, everyone’s favorite personality emoticons have been criticized for being too limited in terms of choices. Apple offers a wide variety of Caucasian skin tone emojis, ranging from two girls dancing to a small family, but no other races. The only racial emojis include a dark skinned emoji with a supposedly religious headdress and a man wearing a traditional Chinese skullcap. But where are the black people emojis? To users and critics alike it is obvious there is a clear lack of minority representation on the keyboard.

In response to the nationwide censure, Apple plans to release a more racially diverse set of emojis in its beta version of iOS 8.3; a decision that should have been made a long time ago. Through this update users will be able to adjust emojis skin tones using a modifier to select from five different color preferences. The new keyboard is also set to feature 30 new country flags and same-sex couples. This update is currently only available to developers, but is planned to be released the public in the coming months.