DISNEY POC »

There has been Jasmine and Tiana, Mulan and Pocahontas, but never before has there been a Latina Disney princess. Until now. Disney is about five weeks away from the introduction of Princess Sofia, who will make her debut on the Disney Channel on Nov. 18 in TV movie Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess, ahead of a 2013 TV series on both Disney Channel and Disney Junior. The TV movie and the show are geared toward viewers age 2-7.

Everyone was looking forward to Disney’s first Latina princess, Sofia, who will make her TV debut Nov. 18. And now there’s criticism surrounding the accurate portrayal of her ethnicity? This is rich. All of us in the Latino community have been asking brands to STOP stereotyping us – we don’t all eat beans, we don’t all play the guitar, trust me we are not all good gardeners and our skin comes in all shades. Would the reaction be different if Sofia were dark skin with brown eyes and also rolled her “Rs”? That would have mobilized a protest of epic proportions!

Disney has worked overtime in recent years to leave that past behind, and a surprising groundswell of support from black viewers for a new TV cartoon called “Doc McStuffins” is the latest indication that its efforts may be paying off.

Aimed at preschoolers, “Doc McStuffins” centers on its title character, a 6-year-old African-American girl. Her mother is a doctor (Dad stays home and tends the garden), and the girl emulates her by opening a clinic for dolls and stuffed animals. “I haven’t lost a toy yet,” she says sweetly to a sick dinosaur in one episode.

“It truly warmed my heart and almost brought tears to my eyes when my 8-year-old, Mikaela, saw ‘Doc McStuffins’ for the first time and said, ‘Wow, mommy — she’s brown,’ ” Kia Morgan Smith, an Atlanta mother of five, wrote on her blogCincomom.com. Myiesha Taylor, a Dallas doctor who blogs at CoilyEmbrace.com, took her praise a step further, writing, “This program featuring a little African-American girl and her family is crucial to changing the future of this nation.”

Since the Cosby show went off the air in 1992, we have not seen as many positive African American images on T.V. as we had hoped. This was especially true for our small children. Outside of Sesame Street, it seemed that children’s TV was still lacking the representation of diversity that made up the United States. But that has all changed with one new children’s program.

We have written a couple of entries in our blog about why we love Disney’s Doc McStuffins. We have discussed how we believe that this program featuring a little African American girl and her family is crucial to changing the future of this nation.

We also started a campaign to express our thanks to Disney and Brown Bag Films for creating, producing and airing Doc McStuffins. What started out as a simple collage of a few African American women physicians expressing thanks to Disney and Brown Bag Films has now taken on a life of its own. When we first started the collage we never thought we would get anywhere close to the current number of physicians who have agreed to lend their image to this project. But here we stand today with what we believe may be one of the most moving visual images of African American women in some time. [SOURCE]