Eating Ice Cream in the Middle of a Cultural Battlefield: Disneyland

This Spring Break, I’ll be smack, dab in the middle of one of America’s most combustible cultural battlegrounds, Disneyland. Now check this out; it’s going to be an interesting, evolving, and all-so-telling moment in the contrasting story of this internally and eternally conflicted empire.

I know, that’s a lot more going on at Disneyland than you ever thought.

Understanding everyone’s isn’t a delusional Disney family as we are, with over two dozen vacations/road trips from Colorado to Disneyland/World. Let’s quickly roll and stroll through this controversy: Splash Mountain was, keyword -“was” an iconic water log ride, based on a 1946 Disney motion picture that blended animation and real actors set in the Land of Dixie, and it painted and stained the slaves as happy, content, something more akin to an idealistic yet fake, false and fabricated “normality,” rather than human beings reflecting the horrors and trauma of 200 years of enslavement. Black folks at the time found it insulting and belittling of the real, actual, and factual Black experience.

The movie was White-listed, and the ride has always maintained some level of controversy.

Despite the characters being animals, the racial connections, innuendos, and slights were embedded, if you were hip to the racist jive hidden in plain sight.

Nevertheless, Disney had an epiphany, came to their 21st-century senses, regardless of what honestly fueled them, and decided to flip the script, and re-theme the 30-year-old ride. Change everything. It will now highlight, showcase and feature a strong, beautiful, and successful Black woman, along with a “colorful” accompanying cast. It will be titled, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and will open in 2024.

Everything, and I do mean every damn thing, Trump and DeSantis’s despicable disciples despise: Cultural diversity, racial inclusion, and gender equality.

Now, what I deem as progress translates into “wokeism” in the upside-down world of Neo-Confederates.

Since Disney announced the righting of the ride, along with the removal of all remnants, the Southern defenders and sympathizers have had their Crimson and gray tighties in a bunch, running around like Chicken Little, whining about how “the sky is fallin’!” It’s the end of their fake, fabricated, and ridiculously concocted fairy tale, in so, so, so many ways that they’re losing their tobacco-chewing minds.

Bottled water from the defunct ride auctioned online for thousands of dollars. A sit-in protest is planned for the week we’re there. Good lord, I hope so, I’m launching a podcast and this will be dynamite material: interviews stuffed full of authentic frontier MAGA gibberish articulated by rednecks and hillbillies masquerading as “real,” patriotic Americans.

As I mentioned earlier, this is but one of this American Kingdom’s cultural battlefields.

The National Football League is another place where color, gender, and culture are clashing; Lamar Jackson, a Black Quarterback in the National Football League, is challenging the good ol’ boy system of pimping and exploiting athletes. He is demanding a “guaranteed” contract worth roughly a quarter billion dollars, and the billionaires are aghast. A Black boy, demanding more?! How dare he! He ought just to be grateful and thankful he is now, today, allowed to play the game, let alone occupy the most exalted position on the field.

Million dollar gladiator slaves, trillionaire owners….

Casual sports fan, please recognize the Quarterback, i.e., field general, signal caller, alpha male golden boy position has historically been “off-limits” to Black players. Black men were branded as intellectually inept, unable to grasp complicated offenses, and unequipped to decipher complex NFL defenses. We were said to lack leadership qualities because we are void of character, grit, and integrity.

Black men didn’t measure up to be leaders, have White men tell it.

Jackson taking this action, demanding what he believes the gridiron marketplace deems he’s worth, is akin to Sidney Poitier returning the slap in the face from the White aristocrat back in the classic flick “In the Heat of the night.”

He’s another version of Colin Kaepernick, another proud, defiant, and “Uppity Nigger.” Thank god! I love and revere uppity Black folks, I’ve strived to be one my entire life.

God bless you bra’, keep on keepin’ on, demand what you know you’re worth, break the backs and wallets of those 21st-century plantation owners who refuse to allow Black folks into the ownership country club. These are fat cats who break bread and chew the fat with Donald Trump and other White supremacists.

Understand casual sports fan, Jackson, is exercising “Black Power” on the cultural battlefield that is American sports. He’s actually displaying never really seen before “audacious” power in the face of racist, sexist, elitist, and xenophobic White men.

Back at Disneyland, the battle will just be beginning. Next year when they reopen the ride as Tiana’s ride, this empire will witness a line drawn in the sand at Disneyland. People will refuse to ride the “woke” ride, and will attack and vilify those who do. And guess what’s next? They’re lighting their hair on fire because a Mermaid Princess, Ariel, is being depicted as Black, and God knows all mermaids are White, right?

Boy, this is going to be something. Hang on!