35 Think Piece: “We Need to Stop Celebrating ‘Diversity’”
35 Think Piece: “We Need to Stop Celebrating ‘Diversity’”
Jocelyn Truong
Instructor Juliette Holder
ENG 1023.07
21 September 2022
We Need to Stop Celebrating “Diversity”
Disney’s teaser for its live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has amassed over 22 million views—and about 2 million dislikes, more than any other of Disney’s past trailers. The reason is this: Halle Bailey, an African American singer, has been cast as the main character Ariel, who was originally white. While many eagerly anticipate the debut of a new Black Disney princess (who won’t spend the majority of her movie in a frog’s body), the controversial race swap has prompted cries of unfairness from across the Internet, many of which take a stand against “wokeness” and “forced diversity” in response.
This level of backlash is well deserved, though for entirely different reasons. The issue isn’t that the new Ariel is Black—the character’s identity has never revolved around her race. So as far as audiences are concerned, if Halle Bailey can capture the essence of the Little Mermaid, then she is Ariel. She’s already knocked the vocal requirement far out of the park if the trailer has anything to say about it. But to tout a race-swapped role as a trailblazer for representation and an overall win for diversity in our media is a disservice to people of color.
Now, there is no doubt that representation is critical for minorities, especially as children. Growing up Asian-American myself in the 2000s and 2010s, I barely saw other Asians in Western media. Perhaps if I visited a friend blessed with cable TV, I could watch an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon, or catch a few scenes of Brenda Song’s London Tipton on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. But every time I stepped back into the world, all I had were mystical kung-fu wizards and thickly accented background caricatures to “represent” me as a little Vietnamese girl. My dignity was shielded only by a DVD copy of Mulan, and even then, Mulan would be the only notable Asian character I could name for years to come. At one point, I was so desperate to be seen in the media that I began hoping white celebrities with dark hair were at least part Asian. Eventually my childhood quest for Asian representation came to a close when I discovered K-pop and its burgeoning popularity in the United States. (a safe haven where Asians were finally cool), but the fact that I had to metaphorically “go back to my own country” before I felt seen in the media was disheartening in of itself.
With this being said, in the early 2000s and 2010s, I would have been thrilled to see any kind of Asian Disney princess grace the screen because, race-swapped or not, receiving any morsel of representation felt like a gift from above. The social expectations of the era gave Hollywood the OK to pretend minorities didn’t exist every time they didn’t feel like using us as punchlines (e.g., the Asian clique in Mean Girls) or plot devices to further the develo