A Black Disney Princess: "That's Evolution"

To explain the importance of Disney's first black princess in an Obama-fied world, I must go back to the late 1980s and early 90s. I'd split from my first husband, was raising two boys alone, and was worried about role models.

This was the height of the crack cocaine scourge. Countless young black men were dying; my little boys saw endless media images of black men as mug shots and chalk outlines. I was grateful for TV's hugely popular "The Cosby Show," which depicted blackfolk much like my hard-working black friends and co-workers. But kids' movies? There was the crab from "The Little Mermaid," and canines from "Oliver & Company" and other second-fiddle characters voiced by black actors. The real stars of children's movies--the human characters in animated features like "Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," and the leads in "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"-- were overwhelmingly white.

Having spent a small fortune on Disney movies and videos, I wanted more. So when my job placed me at an event with then-Disney chief Michael Eisner, I impulsively wrote him a note. Citing kids' need for role models in every shade, I asked, "Isn't it time Disney created a black hero?" Slipping my note in his pocket, Eisner promised to read it.

I never heard a peep from Disney. Until now.

In November, the studio will unveil "The Princess and the Frog," an animated feature whose heroine is Tiana, a black New Orleans waitress who transforms into an amphibian after kissing one. Like earlier princesses, Tiana must find true love and be aided by critters--a firefly and a trumpet-playing alligator--before her dreams come true.

Whether Tiana fulfills my dreams of an emulation-worthy black heroine remains to be seen. I'm hopeful, since "The Princess and the Frog" was directed by the brilliant team that helmed "Mermaid" and "Aladdin." I loved Disney's earlier princess-of-color flicks "Aladdin" (1992), "Pocahontas" (1995), "Mulan" (1998).

But I can't help wondering: Is Tiana as necessary as she was 20 years ago?

Today's black boys and girls have the world's biggest box office draw (Will Smith), and Oscar winners Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Hudson to admire on-screen, as well as such icons as Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey. The "High School Musical" franchise's cast is as admirably multicultural as those of TV's "Heroes" and "Lost."

Even more significant: Barack Obama's presidency, a development I couldn't have imagined in 2007, let alone 1989. Michelle Obama is a walking advertisement for black female grace and achievement; Sasha and Malia may be the most potent symbols of black childhood the world has seen.

Yet a role model like Tiana still matters. Our dismayingly sex-steeped culture notwithstanding, girls are still romantic. They still love princesses and dream of being loved for their smarts, beauty and spunk--traits that Disney heroines possess in abundance. For black girls whose loveliness was long denied and whose lives are too often complicated by racism, poverty and diminished opportunity, a black Disney princess will be a feature-length hug.

Seeing one on a 50 x 70 ft. screen could be as powerful as watching girls who look like them play with their puppy at The White House, as seismic as it was for their parents to see their neighbors elect a president who resembled them.

Tiana could do for all kids what the Obama family does for all Americans: Present an appealing, relatable image of black life. Yes, the First Family's image is as controlled as any Hollywood star's. But we've long been moved by controlled presidential images: Franklin D. Roosevelt, who avoided being photographed in his wheelchair; "devoted" hubby John F. Kennedy, who cavorted with Marilyn Monroe, religious right darling Ronald Reagan, who seldom attended church. Even idealized images have power.

But Tiana's a cartoon. Could such a trifle really matter? After spending the past two years writing a memoir, I've learned how impossible it is to know exactly what shapes us. Is it our parents' connection to us? Our siblings' influence? Our educations, schoolmates, the neighborhoods we grew up in? The messages we learn about who and what we could be?

What about cultural influences, such as the movies we absorbed without noticing? I know every word to songs from "The Wizard of Oz," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Cinderella" from my girlhood; I recently caught myself humming Mulan's fight song--"Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns!"-- while sorting laundry. Did Snow White's concern for her seven charges make me whistle a happier tune while cooking for my brothers? Could Disney Family Values have nudged me toward one day finding the kind of upright prince who not only "put a ring on it" but put my sons from my first marriage through college? Did years of admiring beauties who looked nothing like me undermine my sense of self?

I was struck by my pre-teenaged goddaughter's first words upon hearing that Disney's new heroine was black: "That's evolution!"

"People are realizing how important (minorities) are," Ariane, 11, said. When she was six, she explained, she adored "The Little Mermaid" --"but everyone in it was white....It almost seemed that I wasn't as good as them. Like, 'You're not special enough to be in this movie.' I don't think that's what they want little girls to think."

Princesses are important, Ariane said, because they "represent grace and kindness and order. Beauty is the first thing people think of but...it's more about her personality. (A princess) is like a role model," she concluded. "Someone else to look up to."

Some else to look up to. In world in which kids have many positive black-and brown and yellow and white-role models, an unprecedented animated princess sweetens the mix. Disney heroines, too, have evolved, from demure stunners who dreamed only of love to feisty forces who defy intolerance, teach others to love nature, and don Dad's armor to save China.

Speaking of evolution, there's the matter of Tiana's olive-skinned true love, Naveen. His indeterminate ethnicity has some crying foul. It's a pity, they say, that Disney passed up the opportunity to make Tiana's true love the studio's first black prince.

With Obama in the White House, they may not have to wait 20 years to see that rectified.