You’d think humanity would be better than this by now. MJ and Flash Thompson are no longer white in the MCU, and nobody cares. We had our first black president, and everything worked out just fine. Will Smith even nailed it as the Genie in Aladdin. But here we are again and now, even The Little Mermaid isn’t safe.
This time, the completely unnecessary controversy is surrounding Halle Bailey. She’s the talented actress who plays Skylar Forster in Grown-ish, the spinoff of ABC’s Black-ish. If her name’s unfamiliar to you though, that’s all about to change, as Disney has cast the African-American youngster as Ariel in their upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.
Many celebs and websites have shown their support for the actress, including Disney’s TV channel Freeform, and in response to all the haters online who can’t seem to get behind Bailey as Ariel, they’ve posted the following message:
An open letter to the Poor, Unfortunate Souls:#TheLittleMermaid #Ariel #MyAriel pic.twitter.com/XYJSXKt2BU
— Freeform (@FreeformTV) July 6, 2019
As unfortunate as it is, the backlash we’re seeing is more or less expected these days. Sites are running articles covering the hashtag #NotMyAriel and it’s going a little nuts on the trending charts right now. A quick scan through the Twitterverse though will show you that the majority of the usage is coming from people who are mad about all these people who are allegedly mad that Ariel isn’t white.
In other words, it would seem the media is inflating the severity of the backlash. Despite that, and only being able to count on two or three hands the number of actual racist tweets there are, a little racism is still racism, and it’s ugly.
At the moment, Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is set to begin filming in early 2020 and though this backlash is unlikely to die down anytime soon, you can always get away from it by checking out some Halle Bailey Ariel fan art, or how Idris Elba might look as King Triton. Now that’s a casting choice we’re sure everyone can get behind, right?
