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It happened when Latina actor Rachel Zegler was cast as Snow White in the upcoming 2024 movie. It happened when Black actor Yara Shahidi was cast as Tinker Bell. And now it’s happening with Halle Bailey, a Black actress starring in “The Little Mermaid.” While these are all Disney movies, it’s not uncommon to find racist feedback on social media for any movie that casts non-white actors in roles previously played by white actors.
Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid tries to understand why this is happening.
Some detractors claim the projects that place a person of color in a central role are what amounts to “forced diversity,” a desire not to create the best art possible but to push a so-called “woke” agenda. Except centering a person of color in a movie is not in and of itself pushing any agenda at all. Populating the world on our screens with faces that accurately represent our diversity — rather than sticking to the stories exactly the way they were written in the first place, when they were written by a singular very specific category of person — it doesn’t just sound like the right thing to do, it sounds like a whole lot more fun.
So the next time you hear someone say, “well, but in the original ‘Little Mermaid’…” you can remind them that the original “[The] Little Mermaid” was an allegory of a closeted gay man’s desire to love openly. In the end, the mermaid dies. That’ll get ‘em.
