Those who are aware of Betteridge's law of headlines may be tempted to assume an answer here. As the law states, "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

But the problem is a bit more complicated than that. As McGill notes,

This effect may also signal a squeamishness on the part of white people. The folks I talked to before writing this story said it felt awkward to use an affirmatively white emoji; at a time when skin-tone modifiers are used to assert racial identity, proclaiming whiteness felt uncomfortably close to displaying “white pride,” with all the baggage of intolerance that carried.

McGill argues rightly that in opting for the white emoji, a white person is engaging in a sort of affirmative white supremacy. But diving deeper, we must also consider the troubling nature of the yellow emoji.

When white people opt out of [white] racemoji in favor of the “default” yellow, those symbols become even more closely associated with whiteness—and the notion that white is the only raceless color.

Indeed, McGill notes that there is a precedent for yellow being culturally associated with whiteness as can be seen in the popular TV show, The Simpsons.

It follows that in using a yellow emoji, a white person is presuming whiteness as a default, and therefore reinforcing racist prejudice by preferring whiteness to be the default signifier.