I want real representation with our own characters, not recycled white characters made black
Begin Rant
There are some characters that we all love *cough* Princess Tiana, who I believe for a few reasons are not good representation.
You've heard this one before but Tiana IS green for most of the movie. That didn't matter before because once the magic wore off she's just a hard working black girl who gets everything she wanted and I love that. But that was before Soul. He's BLUE. I get it, I do, souls are raceless or whatever, but these are two of the only dark skinned characters to be animated and they're not even allowed to have skin colors.
I will admit that a couple children's shows have come out since then that show little black kids with their skin colors, but none of those are as popular as these.
Anyway those examples are slightly annoying but not that bad. If that's the story you're trying to tell then fine, love that. I'll watch it and I'll probably like it too.
Then Comes Ariel
uuuuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhhhh.
Halle Bailey is beautiful and so talented and skilled and her chance to be a princess was wasted on a movie THAT ALREADY EXISTS. Remember? It's about a little white girl who doesn't listen to her daddy? We've SEEN THAT and we can watch it over and over and show it to our kids we never needed a remake.
If you're going to make a live action anyway, why not stay loyal to the source material? Why change the race of the MAIN character of all things?
I do have a problem with Ariel being black, I hatehatehate it BECAUSE we have so many black writers and character designers who could have created a N E W black princess with a fun and cute story and fucking killer vocals too. Why are we not focused on that?
LETS MAKE NEW STORIES FOR US! Lets make new movies with new characters who were ALWAYS black from their conception. Lets put a black girl in a castle, with a tiara and give her a sword. Lets make her privileged and empathetic, a tough fighter with a kind heart and most of all, lets give her dark skin and 4C hair and a dad that looks just like her and is BORN a prince who grows up to be KING of the damn kingdom.
Black Panther is a great example. Basically, lets do more of that.
The problem isn't just Ariel though, just to be clear.
It's been happening a lot lately, from freaking Idris Elba playing Heimdall and Jimmy Olsen being drawn black to Annabeth Chase (love PJO) It's widespread.
In order to "represent" black people, the creators of these shows/movies have been giving us recycled characters. It isn't just an injustice to black people, it's also weird that they keep remaking the same things over and over with hardly a difference in them. What are we learning about Superman that hasn't been said before? Where are the writers? The creators with brand new stories to tell? What's going on?
Scapegoating?
Every time a character's race is changed, what happens?
Some white people kick up a fuss, cussing out black people online for asking for rep. As if we begged them to make your favorite characters another race. We didn't ask for that either, what we asked for was more black characters in general. What we meant was for people to CREATE original black characters and allow black writers a voice in media to show their characters and stories.
Yes, plenty of people were happy about black Ariel. I don't speak for everybody. People are celebrating black people being in any media that doesn't show us as ghetto gangbangers, and can you blame them? Would you only want to be represented that way? Would you celebrate one of ten times you get to see someone like you lead a movie/show about something other than the worst stereotype of your people?
Now, people angry about the raceswap can blame black people asking for representation for the change in their favs instead of the casting directors who made the choices. And you can say you're mad at both, but you're only taking your anger out on one and it's not the person choosing the cast.