Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian wants interracial emojis, and Tinder is spearheading the campaign to make it happen.
In an initiative, #RepresentLove, Tinder has linked with Emojination founder Jennifer Lee to petition Unicode to include interracial representation in the digital world.
"We want our kids to have emojis that look like their parents," said Ohanian, who has a daughter with his wife (and tennis all-star!!) Serena Williams, to Wired. "[Emoji] are the universal language of the internet and should reflect the modern world where interracial relationships are normal."
But advocators aren't just looking for black and white couple representation, they want every ethnicity to be seen in its emoji counterpart. "While emojis for people of color and emojis for same-sex couples both became a reality in 2015, one group of people is still excluded from emoji representation: interracial couples," reads the Change.org petition. "Isn’t it time all love was represented?"
#RepresentLove comes after Tinder conducted a series of surveys which concluded that "52% say that interracial couples are not well represented or only somewhat represented in today’s tech language culture of emojis, GIFS and memes" and that "72% of global daters say that they have been more open-minded about who they date when using dating sites/apps."
This isn't the first time Ohanian has fought for emoji diversity. He previously joined Lee to include a hijab emoji. As for the interracial emoji, over 1,400 have signed the petition as of this writing. Check it out here.
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