From unicorns to avocados, there’s an emoji for almost everything you could ever want to type. The glorious cartoon world has also become more inclusive where humankind is concerned, with people of colour and same-sex couples added in 2015.
But sadly, interracial couples are yet to be included in the repertoire.
To change that, Tinder has launched an online petition calling for the creation of emojis showing loved up interracial pairs. So far, more than 4,000 members of the public have signed.
In a survey conducted by Tinder of more than 4,200 adults from across the UK, US, Australia and France, over half of respondents (52%) said interracial couples are not well represented or only somewhat represented in today’s tech language culture of emojis, GIFS and memes.
On change.org, people have been sharing their reasons for signing the online petition. “I’m signing because love is love, race does not and should not matter,” one person commented.
Another added: “I want to see people like me and my partner: two women, one black, one white.”
The petition marks the latest move to make emojis more representative of real life. In 2016, The Unicode Consortium, a body of technology companies who make decisions around the emoji keyboard, committed to making professional emojis - such as those showing doctors or chefs - inclusive for men and women. More recently, the consortium confirmed a red-headed emoji will make its way onto phones in 2018 after an online petition started by a HuffPost UK blogger received more than 21,000 signatures.
You can sign the petition to make interracial couples part of the standard emoji keyboard online here.
HuffPost UK has contacted the Unicode Consortium for comment about the petition and will update this piece when we receive a response.