Other responses are kind of fence-sitting so I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say yeah it’s poor taste, but forgiveable. I think it just boils down to why would you use a skin tone that’s not yours? Some people like having an emoji that’s they share with others of their color, so why intrude on that?
In Sesotho, “how are you?” is “ho joang?” which gets shortened to “hj”