This is the type of attitude that we should all take when approaching unsolicited UI redesigns. It's just a single person's POV, sans any data or design requirements that the Microsoft team may have. Not an indictment of their work, but rather a more aesthetic form of exploration. Nice job.

Why not just change the default to yellow and leave it at that?

This isn't a terrible idea. There was also the idea to remove the yellow default entirely. I think it's the fact that people have to select either a default or a race that causes the issue.

No one on the internet is going to think you're trying to show "White Power" just because you're using an emoji representative of your own racial identity.

I don't know. I regularly find myself using the yellow emoji instead of white, out of fear of being perceived as someone with white pride (which is absurd when you think about it, but alas...). It just isn't fashionable or acceptable to be white (and proud).

You can't win. We've created a society where it's fashionable to be a victim, and perceived victims are given precedent (read: special treatment) over all others, regardless of whether or not they were actually victimized (or the others were involved in any sort of perpetration). We are more racist and discriminatory now than we've ever been, but now it's just against a different group.

I think it's up to white users to change this perception by not being racist pigs (which white people in general need to stop being anyway smdh).

Seriously dude? I can't believe that blatant racism and generalizations like that statement not only go unchecked, but are also widely accepted. How hilariously hypocritical of you.

This was very well said.

Oh, Malcolm Gladwell? The author from the definitely not politically motivated New York Times? The expert in selective data sampling? Well I guess that's the end of this discussion. I'll just pack up my things now...

Of course not. But I think it's safe to say that we're all sick of people who have become professional victims, where all they do is complain and reinforce each others' entitlement complexes in their "safe space" echo chambers. Nobody likes to be rabidly accused of and blamed for "atrocities" that they didn't commit or have their accomplishments belittled by "privileges" that they never actually had. But, alas, to these oh-so-progressive and definitely not sexist or racist groups, if you're a straight white male, you absolutely have committed atrocities and you absolutely have benefited from "white privilege".

I can't think of a single mainstream movement that is more blatantly hypocritical and willfully unaware than that.

There are two sides to this, but only one gets coverage in the media. Only one is socially acceptable to understand or endorse publicly. Try to have a real, meaningful dialogue on this, or dare introduce the super duper controversial idea that perhaps trying to fix one kind of discrimination by just introducing another kind of discrimination is a bad idea, and you'll be labeled a racist misogynist whom, according to the twittersphere, apparently doesn't have the right to a living anymore. And the cowardly corporations in their perpetual fear of being labeled as an organization that isn't "inclusive", "diverse", and "progressive" (and thus losing market share from one specific vocal minority), will fire you. They don't care about these issues, but they'll play to them to save face. And that conveniently is very self-satisfying to the people putting pressure on corporations and our society, reinforcing their behavior and telling them that it is acceptable, when it absolutely isn't.

If we ever want to make any meaningful progress in race and sex discrimination, we have to stop being so radically positioned to one side or the other. What I just said here would have never come out of my mouth two years ago, but things have heated up so much lately that I almost feel a need to go radically to the other side to help balance things out. But this doesn't help either.

We need to have real, open, rational dialogue about this without the threat of being labeled as a bigot that doesn't deserve a job just because you introduced a perspective that one group of people doesn't feel fully comfortable with or can't understand.

We are not invoking real change in our world right now. We're just silencing people that we don't want to hear from. People we can't understand. But these people exist and their viewpoints are legitimate. This is why you see two radically opposed (and equally unqualified) presidential candidates winning in the US right now. Fear and censorship are not the ways of progress. The far right and the far left are equally absurd, selfish, bigoted, and ignorantly positioned in their views.

This article, for once, was balanced. And that resonates with rational people. Sadly, in today's world, this kind of rational behavior is characterized as refreshing.

Are you talking about the type of PC racists that ruined Justine Sacco's life and then laughed about it? Or is that an acceptable form of bigotry and harassment because it's done in the name of "equality", "diversity", and "inclusion"?