When my co-worker sent me this, it was then I knew, we had officially arrived.

And when I say we, I mean all the brown women and men of the world. According to cosmopolitan.com:

Today, developers got the beta versions of Apple’s new operating system updates. And those updates (OS X 10.10.3. and iOS 8.3) contain something lots of users have been clamoring for: emojis with different skin tone options.

Omigosh…can you say swoon?!? Mama we’ve made it!

And while the new emojis will ambiguously represent different ethnicities, all I can think about is how this good news is a triumph for anyone of African decent. I mean it is black history month, so tell me it’s a coincidence and I won’t believe you.

I can’t even front, Apple did their damn thang with the vast ranges of color. I mean from Lego man yellow to Shaquille O’ Neal blurple (that’s brown + purple for those of you who are color math illiterate) I’m just as happy as I’d be watching a L’Oreal True Match commercial with Beyonce telling me her Creole tone of beige foundation matches my skin tone seamlessly.

The only drawback? These fifty shades of little brown people are gonna spark up some major digital intra-racism. I can see it now….all my browner and darker skinned friends using the lightest emoji to crack jokes about my lack of melanin like they always do when they wanna be funny. And knowing how insensitive I am to black on black hate once it’s directed at me, I will able to come back at them with a matching joke with the shade appropriate emoji to ignite the convo. These emojis are going to make texting fun again!

Okay but all jokes aside, for us black people, it’s the least Apple could do. After the tumultuous past year for our race, and the blatant shade thrown at us with the lack of nominations at that one huge movie award show that aired this past Sunday, it’s nice to see some sort of love being tossed our way. At this point I’ll take what I can get….one small step for a tan man, one giant leap for tan mankind.

#AllEmojisMatter