Racism on Disney

We've all watched a Walt Disney film as a child growing up but with no awareness of the subtle racism hidden within the texts. Children are likely to learn and somewhat apply what they've watched along with setting stereotypes on certain ethnic groups that matches characteristics of usually the antagonists in Disney films. Aladdin portrays the Arabs as "Bad" and also with foreign accents while Aladdin and Jasmine speak in standard American English as Giroux points out. Aladdin is almost depicted as an American with his skin colour being almost white despite his ethnic background in the fictional narrative of the film, while Jafar is portrayed as evil as he can be with heavy Arab accents. The hyenas in The Lion King speak in vernacular Afro American accent and are the corrupt enemies of the Lions. The Jungle Book also portrays the orangutans and gorillas as having black accent which leads to connoting black people as animals. It is hard to think of many Walt Disney children targeted films with blacks or other ethnic groups being portrayed in a positive light. The idea of white supremacy illustrated in films are likely to lead to children acquiring the generalized knowledge of other cultures and reinforcing the idea of 'the other'. Walt Disney films, which possibly is the largest mainstream corporation that produces children's movies, position themselves as contributors to white superiority power whether or not it was their intention to do so. More positive images of 'the others' may be required to balance out this biased stereotyping of other ethnic cultures, to avoid future marginalization of the next generation.