Mel B backs campaign for emojis with Afro hair on mobile devices

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Louise Thomas

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Former Spice Girl Mel B is backing a campaign for Afro hair emojis to be rolled out across global digital devices.

Out of almost 4,000 emojis, none represent people with hairstyles commonly worn by Black or dual heritage people, according to research by youth-led group Rise 365.

The campaign group is now lobbying Unicode Consortium, a US-based organisation that decides which emojis are distributed across the world, to diversify its symbols.

Among those supporting the campaign is former Spice Girl, Mel B, who earlier this month also called on the UK government to introduce a law to end Afro-hair discrimination.

On Facebook, she wrote: “The proposed emojis we’re hoping to get on our phones soon: Afro, Locs, Waves & Braids. You can help by searching ‘Afro Hair’ on Google as manyyyyyy times as possible before end of the month so we can bring change to our phones.”

The campaign also comes as Britain celebrates Black History Month.

Joyclen Brodie-Mends Buffong, founder of Rise 365, said “Black and mixed-race people across the UK are confronted by texturism on a daily basis and so we really want to start changing perceptions for future generations, starting where it matters most, with young people.

“Introducing these emojis will not only help more Black and mixed-race people feel equally represented, but we also hope this campaign kick starts conversations around the bigger issues of Texturism and Afro hair discrimination.

“We need everyone to help us show Unicode why these emojis are needed, so please get searching, and hopefully next year we will see these emojis added to keyboards everywhere.”

The upcoming arrival of eight new emojis was recently announced, including an image of a tired face with bags under the eyes and a leafless tree.

However, the absence of emojis with Afro-textured hair has been highlighted with Rise 365 saying it contributes to a wider issue of Texturism; defined as the discrimination of peoples with kinkier, tighter-curled hair textures.

“Sadly, this includes Afro-hair styles being perceived as “unprofessional”, “unattractive”, or “unclean”, and it’s a bias that can occur anywhere,” a group spokesperson said.

Rise 365 is calling for four new emojis which were designed by the young people the group works with, and will be submitted to Unicode in April next year for consideration.