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OPINION

Thursday, July 25, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com OPINION

SAMANTHA DELLA FERA | COLUMN

I

t’s been a busy July. In 
one of the hottest months 
in recent memory, it’s no 
surprise that tensions and hot 
button stories are boiling over. 
From Hollywood to the White 
House, 
people 
are 
getting 
angry. Too often, that anger 
has been directed at people — 
particularly women — of color. 
At the beginning of the 
month, 
Disney 
announced 
Halle Bailey as the actress 
playing Ariel in the live-action 
remake of “The Little Mer-
maid.” Many thought Bailey, a 
young, talented R&B singer and 
star on the show “Grown-ish,” 
was the perfect choice to play 
the coveted role of Ariel. Oth-
ers quickly pointed out what 
they deemed to be an unaccept-
able attribute: She’s Black. Fol-
lowing what should have been a 
career-making announcement 
for Bailey, critics jumped at the 
opportunity to accuse Disney of 
erasing the true story of Ariel. 
In a since-removed change.org 
petition, many people signed 
their names in support of a 
recast of Ariel. Because these 
signators can believe that a 
mermaid exists and has a crus-
tacean best friend, but having 
to watch a movie with a Black 
woman in it? That’s asking just 
a bit too much of them. 
Of course, the criticism of 
Ariel’s casting is coming from a 
place of racism. Unlike the sto-
ries of Pocahontas or Mulan, 
Ariel’s race is of no importance 
to her story. Her story is about 
having your voice stripped 
away from you, being misheard 
and misunderstood. Coming 
from that angle, there is no one 
better to play that role in 2019 
than a Black woman. Thank-
fully, most of the backlash to 
the casting was discovered to 
be trolls, and it has mostly died 
down. 
That brings us to now. It’s 
the middle of July, in the 
midst of a noticeable chasm in 
Democratic ideology, and all 
eyes were on a publicized spat 
between Speaker of the House 
Nancy Pelosi and junior Con-

gresswoman Alexandria Oca-
sio-Cortez. The trouble started 
after AOC and “The Squad” 
— the nickname given to the 
foursome of AOC, Ilhan Omar, 
Ayanna Pressley and Rashida 
Tlaib — voted against a House 
bill to send funds to the border 
that they saw as writing Immi-
gration and Customs Enforce-
ment and Border Patrol agents 
a 
dangerous 
blank 
check. 
Never one to stay out of the 
spotlight, 
President 
Donald 
Trump tweeted that “Progres-
sive’ Democrat Congresswom-
en, who originally came from 
countries whose governments 
are a complete and total catas-
trophe, the worst, most cor-
rupt and inept anywhere in the 
world (if they even have a func-
tioning government at all)” 
should “go back and help fix 
the totally broken and crime 
infested places from which 
they came.” 
Though the women were 

not named, it is clear that 
Trump’s tweet was directed 
at “The Squad,” a group com-
prised of all women of color 
who have been vehemently 
outspoken against Trump since 
the beginning. The tweet obvi-
ously caused a storm of back-
lash, as the “go back to where 
you came from” trope has 
deep, racist roots. Since then, 
Trump has tweeted more dis-
gusting things, and the House 
voted to condemn his words, 
though many Republicans were 
appalled that Pelosi called the 
president’s words racist. 
So what do these two things, 
Ariel and Trump’s tweets, have 

in common? The fury at a Black 
Ariel and the racist language 
of our president, coupled with 
the support of his party, are 
one in the same. It’s an anger 
that has manifested in parts of 
America towards seeing people 
put in positions where they 
allegedly don’t belong. It is no 
surprise that Donald Trump is 
a racist: He has been proving it 
since the 1970s. Yet people are 
constantly surprised that the 
people who back him just don’t 
care. But of course they don’t 
care, because they agree.
Trump was recently asked if 
it concerns him that people saw 
his tweets as racist and white 
nationalist groups are stand-
ing by him. He said, “It doesn’t 
concern me because many peo-
ple agree with me. And all I’m 
saying — they want to leave, 
they can leave.” 
Republicans didn’t leave in 
the eight years they spent hat-
ing Barack Obama, questioning 
his citizenship and blocking 
every action he tried to take, 
and Democrats aren’t going 
to leave now. It drives Trump 
and his backers crazy to see 
Hispanic, Black and Muslim 
women in Congress, because 
they don’t think these women 
have a place in the govern-
ment. People don’t want a 
Black Ariel because it feeds 
into their white supremacist 
narrative that they are being 
replaced or cast aside. We have 
to stop dancing around these 
outbursts by labeling them as 
“racially charged” or “politi-
cally motivated” — they’re just 
racist. To beat around the bush 
is not to declare that the prob-
lem exists, which only allows 
it to grow and hide behind the 
cover of politics as usual. Call 
it out — on the House floor, in 
movies, wherever it needs to be 
heard. The Trump presidency 
will end, but the stain he left on 
this country and the fires he’s 
reignited will burn on. Now’s 
the time to start stamping them 
out.

Anger towards Ariel and AOC are one in the same

Samantha Della Fera can be 

reached at samdf@umich.edu.

EMILY CONSIDINE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT EMCONSID@UMICH.EDU

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The criticism of 
Ariel’s casting is 
coming from a 
place of racism.

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