“”Blacks were never subservient to whites?”” Kids say the darndest things.
At least, they will after viewing Disney’s upcoming “”The Princess and the Frog,”” the unwittingly controversial introduction of Disney’s first black princess. Alas, nobody warned Mickey about portraying pre-Civil Rights Act blacks in today’s Don Imus world. Now the company has a political nightmare on its hands, and in its continuing efforts to mollify the race police, Disney has rewritten American history against the interests of our nation’s children.
In the past, Disney has smartly stuck to the safe territory of retelling European fairy tales, exploring the secret lives of animals and personifying objects. These stories easily avoided controversy. Mickey and Minnie were mice but never multiplied like mice; Aladdin and Co. were all the same race; and the beast didn’t eat the beauty.
The backdrop for Disney’s newest fable, though, is much different. The story takes place in New Orleans during the Roaring Twenties, when the jazz was hot, the gumbo was hotter and segregation thrived.
People get a little sensitive about that last part, and they’ve been fighting to excise it from the film.
In the original script, the black princess worked in a Cinderella-esque role as the chambermaid for a rich, spoiled, white Southern debutante. It was a role undoubtedly played by thousands of young black women at the time, and it fit well into the story.
Unfortunately, it also reminded people of the unpleasantness of past race roles. Some people objected to the portrayal, and instead of defending the story, the producers gave in and quietly changed the script.
You see, kids? It’s like racism never even happened!
There’s more lunacy where that came from. Originally, the princess was named Maddy. But the “”moniker mafia”” protested that Maddy sounded a bit too much like Mammy, the slang name given to the period’s matronly black women, like Aunt Jemima and Scarlett O’Hara’s slave in “”Gone with the Wind.””
Of course, it’s an affectionate, historically accurate term that kids wouldn’t think twice about – and the name isn’t even that term – but such logic is lost in today’s atmosphere of political correctness.
In a statement acknowledging it was succumbing to political pressure, Disney said, “”all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity.””
That’s a lie. Rewriting the fable for the purposes of making history more family-friendly shows absolutely no respect or sensitivity. Instead of worrying that history will get in the way, Disney should embrace it as it grows into a story organically. The producers need not go out of their way to explain racism and persecution. Rather, they should tell the tale as honestly as possible, because America’s children need to know about our country’s troubled past.
The same week the Disney story broke, the Department of Education reported that 30 percent of fourth graders don’t even have basic proficiency in American history. On standardized tests, thousands of fourth graders nationwide demonstrated their ignorance in America’s racial past. Here are some of the telling results:
* When shown signs that read “”We wash for white people only”” and “”For Whites Only,”” just 39 percent of fourth graders understood that those signs showed prejudice.
* Two out of five believed the Civil War was fought over gold, oil or religion.
* When shown a map of the world, only 46 percent were able to correctly identify Africa as the source of America’s slaves. Twenty percent said they came from Canada.
Of course, Disney films are not responsible for these statistics – yet. To portray early 20th-century America as a land of racial harmony would be grossly irresponsible. The company can offer children a peek into America’s history in a fun and honest way, or it can lie and whitewash (pun intended). Looking at the facts, the right decision is clear.
Those voicing objections to the accurate portrayal of history worry that if kids see black people treated subserviently, they will mimic that behavior in the schoolyard. They worry that when kids play “”The Princess and the Frog”” during recess, they’ll make their black classmate wait hand and foot on a snooty white classmate. This could indeed come to pass, but only as the product of a laissez-faire approach to parenting.
It’s long been known that racism is learned, in most cases from parents. Instead of complaining that children who see the film’s negative racial roles will become racist, parents should use “”The Princess and the Frog”” as an opportunity to discuss America’s history of prejudice and why it’s wrong.
It’s tough finding the right time and the right way to explain difficult topics to kids, like where babies come from and why grandpa is gone. This movie could provide parents the opening they need to set the record straight on racism, and critics should recognize that.
One of the most important responsibilities society has to its children is protecting their innocence so kids can be kids. Some deceptions, like Santa Claus, actually support innocence because they make the world a more magical place. But this is not Santa Claus. This is not a story that ends happily ever after. This is American history, and it shouldn’t be messed with.
From time to time, people will accuse something of being “”Disneyfied,”” which basically means it’s been sugarcoated, simplified and sentimentalized. But if Disney reconstructs Jazz Age New Orleans as a paradise of racial equality, “”Disneyfied”” might as well mean false.
