How appropriate that in the same year America (USA), gets its first African-American (bi-racial) president that Disney is about to release, in December 2009, its first African-American princess. YAY! Cheers, applause, shouts, and what ever else excited people do. A step in the right direction, black representation, pandering to a specific audience, does Disney see the dollar signs; I'm sure there are an endless list of possibilities for this black princess's sudden arrival. But, who cares? I don't. I'll tell you what I do care about. I think it is important and significant that in a highly visual culture that the diversity of the landscape is represented on television and in film. I am firm believer that our sometimes mindless forms of entertainment do have a way of influencing our thinking. That is why the stereotype often becomes reality. It's the signs of life in our culture and how we oftentimes come to learn about things or people that may seem somewhat removed from our social circles.
A bit of history, and feel free to skip this, but it's history, please read it. In the years proceeding the landmark Brown vs. Board of education case in 1959, the case outlawing segregation in public schools, attorney Thurgood Marshall had to present evidence which proved segregation, the separate and very unequal status of African-American schooling, had harmful effects on the self-concept, esteem, etc... of African-American students. He cited the studies of psychologist Kenneth Clark, which I think was reffered to as footnote 13. At the time Clark's worked centered around the deleterious effects of segregation on black children in public schools. In one of his many experiments, he conducted a doll favorably test so to speak, on a random number of black girls in which they were given dolls of all colors to play. When asked which doll they preferred, most, if not all, favored the white dolls.
This is a sweeping generalization of his research and the experiment. But, my point here is to suggest that entertainment media images have a lot of power to reinforce and send oftentimes both subtle and blunt messages to their audience, sometimes positive, and sometimes negative. Thus, today, still the African American female presence is lacking on television and in films. Name at least 2 African American actress in a major network series right now. Oh I'm sure you can, but they are sparse to say the least. Now, Disney has a black princess and she doesn't have the black prince. I say SO WHAT? The fact that finally we see an African American princess is a thing of beauty. Change happens, albeit sometimes too slow....but when progress is made it's made.
