DISNEY POC »

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]