caspian-is-my-homeboy:

feministdisney:

to be honest that’s kind of what the entire blog above addressed? 

I know it’s hard, as white people (assuming you’re white, sorry if I’m wrong) to wrap our minds around the idea of history not being this permanent, unquestionable thing, but our concept of race as it intersects history has been so incredibly informed- not accurately- by the historical media we are exposed to.  Any movie about old-time Europe tends to exclude POC representation not because it’s accurate, but because this perpetuating idea that they were never there.  Any textbook in high schools about Europe involve hand selected images of an all-white Europe.   But because we get exposed to that idea so often, for us it seems truth:  even if we’ve never read any amount of history on medeival Scotland, we all feel like natural experts on the subject of whether or not POC were there!

One reader left this helpful link in their reblog.   It is a link to a bio of Kenneth III of Scotland, who reigned as KING OF THE SCOTS around the year 1000.   He was a POC.   Like that more than anything else should absolutely, entirely, kill all arguments on this subject and maybe awaken some understanding that the way we interpret history is highly informed by questionable, white-washed sources.

Are you serious? How exactly do you know it’s white-washed? If we’re so terribly mis-informed about history, by that logic how do you that your information is accurate? Especially when using Wikipedia as your one and only source. By what your saying, we shouldn’t trust anything about history, because everything must be white-washed. Just because you say it is so doesn’t make it so. I watch a film for the story and any messages that can be perceived from the film. I don’t sit there and count how many PoC are in the film.

do you seriously think Wikipedia invented the fact that he was a POC king in Scotland?  I get that wikipedia is questionable but if you actually doubted the validity of the claim, there are dozens upon dozens of entries on Google that I checked, just didn’t bother to link to since it’s equally accessible to you if you wanted to read more.  

The fact that he existed- and that you have not done anything to question this, just had a “OMG WIKIPEDIA IS INVALID” remark, but the fact that you did anyway feel entitled to question it just because you were, idk, so sure that the history of Scotland must be all white- is, again, all anyone really needs to put down as proof of history white-wash.   There is no incentive for history recorders to have made up that he was POC, so it’s entirely different- and supported by facts- than the issue of POC never being in Europe, which subconscious racism perpetuates, and is not supported by any actual recorded history, just an erroneous pop-culture impression of history.

I don’t sit there and count how many PoC are in the film.

It would be super easy to do though for the last two Disney princess films cause there wasn’t a single one in Brave or Tangled.  

I watch a film for the story and any messages that can be perceived from the film.

Idk if you’re white or not but you do realize this is like… easy to do if you’re white?  It’s easy to say you watch a film for the “story” (as if POC watch films JUST for representation?) when white people are everwhere, in every tv show and movie.   So it’s not exactly hard to “ignore” race or be too cool to care about it when it’s never been an issue to see people that look like you being something other than gangsters or whatever.

POC have to like actually try hard to get their kids to watch movies that show people like them doing ordinary things and being represented.   But whatever, this topic has been up on my blog in discussion for like the past week and tons of people gave their perspective on what it’s like to be POC/representation so it’s there if anyone wants to read about it.