#which stems from the specifics of how racism and misogyny interact such that white women often are able to leverage their whiteness

[lesser-vissir]

Reverse racism isn't real but its kinda insane how some poc react to being told "taking out your anger about racism on white people you oppress on the basis of sexuality or gender, by being homophobic/transphobic to them is bad"

[breakingthedisneyspell]

Hi! 🙂 It’s me again, the anon who talked about The Little Mermaid! Happy New Year! 😁 I saw a post on Instagram saying that the reason why Disney chose a Black actress to portray Ariel and a White actor to portray Prince Eric is because they want to show, through the whole « mermaids and humans are prejudiced against each other » thing, that if people of different groups interact with each other they can break prejudices and live happily and peacefully. What do you think about it? Thank you. 🙂

Hi! Thank you sending this and happy new year to you too!

Oooooh, that is an interesting take. 

But Disney will not showcase racism honestly and focus on assuaging white people’s guilt. I fear that this will be a repeat of Pocahontas where most white people are good with one deficient white man (Ratcliffe). White British invaders killed and pillaged the Americas but Disney could not do that and alienate their favourite audience.

With The Little Mermaid, the idea of “mermaids and humans are prejudiced against each other” is a bad metaphor for racism, forgetting that both sides are not “equally” to blame. White people are the creators and perpetrators of institutionalised racism. We do not hold the same influence, power and authority, even in 2020. 

This mentality also implies that white people’s racism and poc’s wariness of them stem from the same place of ignorance and fear of the Other. White people have systematically degraded, disenfranchised, murdered, used us (colonialism, genocide, slavery, microagressions etc) while cementing themselves as as superior, more erudite, more beautiful etc. Whereas we are rightfully suspicious of white people. 

I honestly do not know why creators always boil racism down to both sides do not know each other enough. Like imagine if they make a movie about white men and white women conversing and how it resolved misogyny. It sounds absurd! I feel that racism is often trivialised and simplified. 

And as for why this will not work for The Little Mermaid specifically if it follows the 1989 plot:

Triton (and Sebastian) as the only ones that are “prejudiced” towards humans. The only scene humans talk about mermaids is in the opening song “Fathoms Below” with “Look out lad a mermaid be waiting for you/ In mysterious fathoms below” and “Where Triton is king and his merpeople sing/ In mysterious fathoms below”. It implies that mermaids might drown you but this danger is not emphasised at all. You blink and you miss the line. So I find it suspect that the only ones that are overtly “prejudiced” are the Black king and a crab. But they might change that in the la. 

Triton’s wariness of men is explained in The Little Mermaid 3 with his wife and the queen is crushed by a boat. But even here, the humans did not see the mermaids and probably do not know that they killed one. The la might use this narrative but racism is not an accident. It is taught, perpetuated and actively enforced to benefit one group at the expense of the others. 

Ultimately this racism metaphor might work if humans actively oppress and hate mermaids, which will not happen. But there will probably be human extras of color which does not sit well with me because it will pass the bulk of the blame from white people to white people and poc, again a possible tactic to assuage white guilt. And there might be white merpeople, which again blurs the lines of oppressor/oppressed.

This is not to say that groups of color cannot be prejudiced against one another but poc cannot be racist towards white people. Prejudiced sure but none of this “reverse racism” nonsense. Anyways I do not trust mainstream Disney to explore racism between poc in a millions years. 

This got long but my final verdict is that this is a lazy narrative and do not trust Disney with representing racism (see Zootopia). Sidenote, children are old enough to be made aware of (human) racism. If little kids of color are old enough to experience racism then (white) children are old enough to be educated about it. Racism is not taboo and should be covered in children’s media.