Singer Conan Gray gets flak for using tan emojis as a ‘white guy’

Singer and YouTuber Conan Gray recently incurred the wrath of the community for posting his pictures with a tan emoji.

With the massive outpour of anger coming his way, the singer swiftly tweeted a response to the accusations and cleared the air.

His tweet discussed his mixed-race heritage and how most of his fans “never met me in real life” and hence were unaware of the actual color of his skin.

It read, "Many of you have brought to my attention my use of tan emojis. I apologize to anybody who was hurt by my use of emojis that you believe are too dark for me to use. I am mixed race and I chose to use the emojis that I felt best represented my skin tone."

In a follow-up tweet, Grey went on to say, "Most of you have never met me in real life and are unaware of how I look in person."

"I am not pale. I am not white. I am mixed race, and I was only trying to find an emoji with a skin tone that felt most accurate to me and my background."

The five skin versions available on both apple and android are based on the Unicode Consortium of 2015 that aims to increase diverse representations and is a six-scale point numerical system for classifying human skin color.