Disney has a Black Prince problem.

‘The Little Mermaid’ is another failure for the company to right this insidious wrong.

Number of Disney Princes at BEST kissing random sleeping women with a casual disregard for consent and at WORST displaying a disturbing interest in necrophilia (She was in a COFFIN!): 1 (Prince Charming/Florian - Snow White)

Number of Disney Princes with a foot fetish: 1 (Prince Charming/Henry - Cinderella)

Number of Disney Princes with a seriously good Pillow Talk game: 1 (Prince Phillip - Sleeping Beauty)

Number of Disney Princes entangled in magical, fishy, familial drama requiring copious amounts of therapy: 1 (Prince Eric - The Little Mermaid)

The poor guy almost drowns at sea, is rescued by a singing fish with fabulous hair, gets harassed by singing crustaceans, almost marries the fish’s aunt, who is an octopus, before being released from auntie’s spell, causing his true love to reveal her fishiness, before steering a pirate ship into octopus/aunt’s heart when she grows to King Kong size. And his father-in-law has nipples the size of teacups. The doctor will see you now…

Number of Disney Princes looking for a lady who could get down with a little beastiality: 1 (Prince Adam - Beauty and the Beast)

Ahem…

Number of Disney Princes who like to play with their pet monkey and really know how to ride some carpet: 1 (Prince Ali/Aladdin - Aladdin)

Number of Disney (non-)Princes who like their ladies prepubescent: 1 (John Smith - Pocahontas, who was 12 when they met in reality.)

Number of Disney Princes who are probably bi: 1 (Prince Li Shang - Mulan)

Number of Disney Princes most often assumed to come from an African nation: 1 (Prince Naveen - The Princess and the Frog. He is from the made-up country of Maldonia, with a heritage much closer to Aladdin’s than Simba’s.)

Number of Disney Princes doomed to clean out hair-clogged shower drains for the rest of his days: 1 (Prince Flynn - Tangled)

Number of Disney Princes of African descent: 0

Lots of people have asked me if I have seen The Little Mermaid yet. I have not. I couldn’t be happier for the representation Black women are enjoying, finally seeing themselves onscreen. But every time I see Ariel sidle up to a non-Black Disney Prince with romance in her eyes, I can’t escape the reality that there has never, NEVER been a Black Disney Prince since the first Disney cartoon was released in 1937 until today.

This was a tickle in the back of my mind back in 2009, at the introduction to the world’s first Black Disney princess. Like most people watching the film, I assumed her love interest was from an African nation. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that his nation was meant to be housed in the Middle East.

I started meditating on the implications of making such a character choice. In 2009. How easy would it have been for them to make him a truly Black Prince? But for some reason, the decision was made to not portray a Black man of royal lineage and legacy on film. Why not?

Then I started thinking about the trend that is still going strong today (Queen Charlotte): Of pairing a Black Queen with men of any other race than Black. It’s almost a genre at this point.

I’m not attacking Shonda Rhymes, who has single-handedly done more for inclusion than anyone I can think of in the last twenty years. But I am calling out this particular narrative as unwittingly purveying one of the most pervasive and insidious forms of racism of our times. The fact is that the only mainstream examples of a Black prince I have seen have been in an Eddie Murphy comedy from the 1980’s…

…and the Black Panther, which still gives me goosebumps when I relive that film’s impact. The Black Panther is a testament to the legendary Stan Lee. While DC was still lily white with its Justice League, Stan Lee was creating a space for the rest of us. People of color and members of the LGBTQIA+ community had places of respect and power within Marvel’s pages eons before DC gave a damn about us.

Disney thinks it’s getting a pass by buying Marvel and thereby buying its way into inclusion but I call bullshit. The Little Mermaid came out this weekend. THIS weekend. Another opportunity to show a Black man in power and another failure to do so.

What about Disney’s upcoming films? I’m glad you asked. They had a chance with the upcoming ‘Wish’, which will feature a new Disney Princess character classified as Hispanic but it’s strongly implied that she will be depicted as Afro-Latinx. Bravo for breaking this representation barrier. But it’s also reported that this character won’t actually have a love interest, kicking the Black Disney Prince can down the road yet again.

What does it tell children when they never see a Black man of power and command and royalty on the screen in these family films? What does it tell Black boys? Why has there never been a push to mix the races of the Royal couple when the Disney Princess is white?

Instead of leaping at the opportunity to try to prove the things I’ve presented in this essay as incorrect, why don’t you spend time pondering those questions…and why it’s so important to you to make these disturbing facts not true?