‘Little Mermaid’ slammed by black activist for ‘erasing’ slavery: ‘Dangerous’

nypost.com:

Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Caribbean Slavery, and Telling the Truth to Children,” Ryder points out that the movie appears to take place in the Caribbean in the 18th century during a time of African chattel slavery — yet the islanders depicted in the film seem to live in a world free of this inhumanity.“In this setting, I do not think we do our children any favors by pretending that slavery didn’t exist,” he wrote. “For me Disney’s preference to try and wish the inconvenient truth away says more about the adult creatives than it does about children’s ability to work through it.”Though he acknowledged that the movie is a fantasy and doesn’t necessarily need to be historically accurate, he said that Disney shouldn’t be “encouraging historical amnesia.”“But the total erasure and rewriting of one of the most painful and important parts of African diasporic history, is borderline dangerous, especially when it is consumed unquestioningly by children,” he added.Ryder proposed that Disney could have instead set the live-action film in Haiti after slavery was overthrown, with Ariel meeting Prince Eric in the wake of real racial harmony and not sacrificing historical accuracy.“We owe it to our children to give them the most amazing fantastical stories possible to help their imaginations grow,” Ryder said. “We do not do this by ‘whitewashing”’ out the difficult parts of our history.

We do it by embracing our rich history and empowering them with the truth.”After the blog went viral, Ryder took to Twitter to clarify his comments to readers.“The sad reality is this great film left me concerned that Disney did not take seriously this very sensitive time and place which due to the atrocities that happened there should be treated very.