Of princesses and politics

Although I said when I started that I'd be talking about more than just "green" issues, this is my first post that really veers from that. So I'll mention a few green things to start: my spinach and tomatoes are sprouting, but my lettuce is doing horribly. Hubby bought some green bean plant starts, and I think I might have to do that with lettuce. On the plus side, our bird feeder is paying off. My daughter and I have been able to watch chickadees, sparrows, robins and even a dove come visit!

So the point of this post: Daughter turned four on Saturday, and had two parties: one in a park in the morning with some family friends with two daughters, and a sleepover with two of her friends from daycare on Saturday night. They all had a blast!

My daughter, like all the little girls mentioned above, is really into Disney princess stuff. Now, I happen to think Belle and Mulan are pretty cool; the rest of the princesses I have mixed feelings about, but not enough to ban her from it. However, I have noticed, and the friend with the two daughters above and I discussed the fact that on most of the Disney paraphenalia, the "princesses of color" (Mulan, Pocahontas, and Jasmine) are often left out. Jasmine is sometimes included, but Mulan and Pocahontas, almost never. I have to wonder why. Even Sleeping Beauty, who is the most useless and passive of the bunch (and therefore the least likely for a young girl to want to emulate) appears on almost all the princess merchandise.

I just learned today that later this year, Disney is introducing its first African-American princess, Tiana, in the animated, "The Princess and the Frog." I have to wonder whether she will continue to appear prominently on princess paraphenalia after the movie has gone from the theaters, or if she will be left out like Mulan, Pocahontas and Jasmine.

I read a few discussions about the new Disney movie, including the fact that Tiana's love interest is possibly white (the cartoon character is dark-haired and olive skinned, the actor voicing him Brazilian; btw, I have no problem with the character being white or "other"), and others which talk about the importance of this movie as a role model for black children, especially girls. In the latter case, some mention the famous doll study used as part of the evidence in the Brown v. Board of Education case. This study has been repeated recently, with similar results: black children preferring white dolls to black ones.

Anyway, it makes me wonder what, if anything, I should be teaching my daughter about race. I don't remember my parents teaching me anything specific, but I remember often preferring black dolls as a child. My favorite set were the Happy Family (scroll down on this page to view them), who I loved not just because they were black but because they also had black hair texture, unlike, say, black Barbies. But I grew up in a predominantly black environment. My daughter, if we continue to live where we live now, will grow up in a majority white (~70%) community.

Right now, she makes observations about people that are just statements of fact, unconnected to politics or sociology. "Daddy is brown, and Mommy, you and me are yellow," she says. A little girl at her daycare is Chinese, she observes, and a boy there has two mommies. Right now, there's nothing remarkable about these facts to her, and I'd love for it to stay that way--where people are people, and their differences are just interesting facts about them.

But I wonder if that's possible. I remember talking with the teenage daughter of a friend a few years ago, who told me about the tensions at her high school between kids of different races. It made me sad, especially when I think of my own high school years in the 1980's, during which, even amid the turmoil of recent desegregation, the kids of different races got along fairly well. (It was the racism of some teachers that was the bigger problem).

And I wonder what Disney is communicating when they make movies about diverse characters but then cut them out of their merchandise. Just food for thought.