How To Be An Ally 🕊
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🕊 Following the tragic events that took place in Atlanta last week that resulted in eight people losing their lives, six of whom were women of Asian descent, we take a look at the importance of allyship, and learn how everyone can be an ally to someone. 🌈 Then, we're joined by Jennifer Daniel, Chair of the Emoji Subcommittee for Unicode. We discuss the importance of inclusion in emojis, what emojis we can expect in the next release, and her thoughts on our use of emojis. 👒 Plus! The Trivia Question of the Day!
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Transcript
Sound Bit 0:00
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Bethany Van Delft 0:06
From how to be an ally to the art of emojis, in the next 10 minutes, we'll get the lowdown on what's up in the world. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and this is The Ten News. Last week, in a terrible tragedy outside Atlanta, eight lives were taken from them. Six of the women were of Asian descent, which is notable because anti-Asian violence has increased in the United States throughout the coronavirus pandemic. In times like these you or someone you know, maybe feeling upset or afraid. It's important to talk to your grownups about how you're feeling. There are many ways we can help and support each other. One way is through something called allyship. Allyship is the practice of showing up speaking up and standing in support of marginalized communities, groups of people who are excluded by society and kept from power that you do not belong to. It's a process that involves lots of listening and learning. Everyone can be an ally. It's a lot like being a good friend. It means listening to people when they speak, hearing and believing their experiences, and supporting them the best way you can. Allyship is a tool for ending bigotry. Bigotry is having an expressing strong dislike for cultures, beliefs, and lifestyles that are different than your own. Allyship helps change this harmful way of thinking through community building and personal relationships. There are lots of things you can do to be an ally. If you see someone mistreating someone, speak up. Let them know it's not okay or get a grown up to help. Listen and learn from the people you want to support. Educate yourself about cultures and communities outside of your own. Believe people of color when they say that something is racist. Talking about race can be uncomfortable, but being uncomfortable is necessary to grow and move forward. Talk with people from your own community about what you're learning so they can become aware and help make change to. As teen activist Ashlyn So wrote in an Instagram post responding to recent events, if people in your circle are not talking about this today, you need a new circle. If this all comes as a surprise to you, wake up. Enough is enough. Ashlyn is right, if we don't talk about what's happening, we can't change it. Being an ally takes practice, and we will make mistakes along the way. But that's okay. Allyship is a daily lifelong practice. We'll continue this conversation and we want to know how you are feeling and what questions you may have. Send us an email at hello@thetennews.com and visit our website for more resources to learn how to be an ally for those around you. Emojis are everywhere. I mean, there's even a movie about them. But do you ever wonder how they get made? To find out, our show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan, sat down with Jennifer Daniel, chair of the emoji subcommittee at the Unicode Consortium to talk about these funny little pictures we use every day.
Jennifer Daniel 3:40
Hi, my name is Jennifer Daniel, and I am the Chair of the emoji subcommittee for the Unicode Technical Committee, which is part of the Unicode Consortium. And I make emoji.
Tracy Kaplan 3:53
I'd love for you to explain to our listeners, what exactly is the Unicode Consortium and who's on it.
Jennifer Daniel 4:00
So Unicode is a volunteer based organization, and they're responsible for encoding the world's languages. Basically, they're the reason that if you send a message in Hindi from one device, the person you're sending it to can read it in Hindi. Before Unicode existed that was a real problem. People couldn't communicate in their native tongues around the world. So think of it this way, right, every letter on the screen that you read, whether it be a tablet, or computer or phone or anything that's in a digital space, every letter is assigned a code point. So if you send someone facepalm emoji, the code point for facepalm is you one F, nine to six, right? So emoji, even though they look like pictures are really a font. And that's why they sit next to words, is because they operate like letters and they are interchangable with with how you text or communicate online. So like I mentioned, Unicode is volunteer based, right. So it's a small group of people who can kind of offer their work for free and do this work. But what we try to do is surround ourselves by experts. So people who understand how people communicate, or maybe they have a certain expertise in... I've been talking to a doctor recently a cardiovascular surgeon around the anatomical heart and lungs and a new emoji for X-ray. So we try to surround yourself by people who really understand the subject matter quite a bit when making decisions around what is useful, what will be used a lot what is currently being used a lot before we add it, which is why it takes almost two years to add an emoji, it takes a really long time because we're, we're embedding it fairly thoroughly.
Tracy Kaplan 5:53
So what I really want to know is when when the consortium makes a decision, those emojis are forever, right?
Jennifer Daniel 6:03
So it's true. Emoji once they're added are there forever, which is really interesting, if you think about it, right? Because languages is flexible and fluid and transient and more football and emoji are not. Emojis stand still.
Tracy Kaplan 6:22
So can you share a little bit about how emojis are actually designed?
Jennifer Daniel 6:26
Yes. So you know, after the consortium makes their list of recommendations, and they become code points and emoji, it's up to designers to well, to get involved. And the first step is we take a look at the image in the proposal. So anyone can propose an emoji. And we take it we try to see what was the intent of the person who proposed it in the first place. Then the next step is we confer with subject matter experts, right? There's, there's nothing that doesn't have a subject matter expert, whether it be the knot emoji, we talk to people who are experts in tying knots. Or if it's an anatomical heart or lungs, we talk to doctors, if it's a brewing, we talk to people who have made boomerangs. And we try to get a sense of is this emoji authentic? So like a good example of that might even be the boomerang emoji in an earlier version of our design, the angle of the boomerang was more around 90 degrees. And when we showed it to someone who was familiar with boomerangs, they were "Oh, no, that, if a boomerang was at that angle, it would never come back to you, because of the way that, you know the precision of the torque and the angularity and the velocity, it would, it would just it would, it wouldn't be a boomerang." And so we, you know, we had to change the angles.
Tracy Kaplan 7:50
It's been really wonderful to see kind of the expansion of skin color and having more gender representation. How has the Unicode Consortium played a role in that and what's coming next in that space?
Jennifer Daniel 8:07
We're trying to identify globally relevant concepts when there are as many genders as there are people in the world, as many foods as there are ingredients on the planet, and a variety of objects that are really only limited by our imagination, every addition to the emoji keyboard is at risk of creating zones of exclusion without consciously trying. So the best we can do is to ensure emoji continue to be as broad and as flexible and as fluid as possible, just like language and just like people.
Tracy Kaplan 8:45
Any sneak peeks, or inside news that you can give us on what emoji are are coming soon.
Jennifer Daniel 8:52
Oh, absolutely. We have a list of 36 new emoji coming out in the next emoji release. And they are available online, which I can share a URL for, I suppose.
Tracy Kaplan 9:04
That would be great.
Jennifer Daniel 9:06
Some of them include melting face, we have a salute face coming as well. Bubbles, and a lotus flower and a number of other, other emojis.
Tracy Kaplan 9:19
Okay, for all of our listeners at home, who love using emojis and filling up their parents text chats with emojis, how could they learn more?
Jennifer Daniel 9:29
You could go to unicode.org is all the information around what Unicode does and that's everything from every language they support, including emoji. And really, the internet is just you know, there's, there's everyone's an emoji expert, everyone's an emoji historian so you'll find lots of people talking about it. But yeah, I tried to think if there's like a really, just use them. You know, if you really want to understand something, my I would just say, just use it and You can come to your own conclusion.
Tracy Kaplan 10:01
Okay, last question. And then I promised Well, we'll let you though. How do you rate our use of emojis on The Ten News?
Jennifer Daniel 10:08
Oh, I love it. I love it. I think they you know, they give you some sense of curiosity like, what is today's episode going to be about? I think I know. There's a nose, what does the nose mean? Is it a pun or is it literally smelling? So I think it's great. I love how you guys use them.
Bethany Van Delft 10:24
If you want to hear more of this awesome interview, be sure to check out our episode on Saturday for the full thing. Coming up next:
Sound Bit 10:33
What, what, what's the big idea?
Bethany Van Delft 10:36
Trivia on The Ten. In what year did the United States Congress accept its first female member? Was it A) 1916? B) 2002 or C) 1875?
Did you guess it? The answer is A!
Jeanette Rankin was elected to represent the state of Montana in 1916. And then again in 1941. During her time in Congress, Rankin worked to expand voting rights for women and improve working conditions for laborers across the country.
Sound Bit 11:21
Excellent.
Bethany Van Delft 11:22
She's actually one of many female leaders from the early 20th century, who worked to make our society more fair, just, and equal. Last year, PBS put out an incredible series of beautifully animated short films called "Unladylike 2020," about 26 of these amazing women. Nice. We'll drop a link in the show notes so you can check them out on your own. Time's up. But before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups. What's up Ten'ners? It's official, we launched The Ten News Ten'ners Club. It's new, it's awesome. And we want you to be a part of it. Join now as a founding member, and you'll get an exclusive shout out on the show. Plus, your very own principal Ten'ners club, press pass. Don't wait. Get in on the fun and be one of the first to join. We made it easy. Just click the link in today's show notes or visit thetennews.com to sign up today. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for new episodes Tuesdays, Thursdays and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. Our editorial director is Tracey Crooks. Editing and sound designed by Pete Musto, who also co wrote today's episode with Ben Austin de Campo. Our creative producer is Jenner Pascua. Stephen Tompkins is our head of audience development and our production assistant is Sarah Olender. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and The Ten News is executive produced by Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. Do you want to be part of the show? We want you too! Have a grown up help you record a question or a joke or a fun fact you want to share and email it to us at hello@thetennews.com and show your love for The Ten News by going to your favorite podcast app and submitting a rating and review because it really helps others find the show so they can join us for the fun. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News. Bye!
