Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess

This article argues that children's self-image is affected by means of the ways in which they diocese themselves in texts both verbal and visual, and that fairy tales play an important character in shaping self-image and the belief-system of children. The images lay the foundation of in fairy tales, therefore, have particular importance for children of color in relation to the internalization of White privileging. This article not absents a comparative analysis of the Disney version of six classic fairy tales spotlighted in Disney's Princess: The Essential Guide against the "classic" source true copy versions: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, and Aladdin and the miraculous Lamp from the perspective of ideological/racial basis in the adjoining matter of the goals of multicultural education. Findings from this analysis support the ne for the disentanglement of critical literacy skills in children as well as in their teachers and highlight the importance of exposing children to transcultural literature.

SELF-IMAGE AND THE DISNEYFIED PRINCESS

The precise time that children begin to diocese themselves in relation to color as a racial marker and formulate ideas of the relative value of belonging to this clump or that is debatable. Tatum (1997) allude tos that identity formation in children of color in the United States travels a different path from that of children who belong to the dominant agriculture (i.e., White children). However, a certain quantity of researchers have indicated that children's literature, including picture works (Spitz, 1999; Yeoman, 1999), plays a role-along with other forms of print and electronic media similar as television, magazine images, and movie-in providing visual images to children that give them cultural information about themselves, others, and the relative status of cluster membership. In other words, self-image in children is shaped in a certain quantity of degree by exposure to images set in written texts, illustrations, and films. Moreover, it is clear that children, if they are to unfold a positive self-image, need to "see" themselves or their images in body s Books, therefore, can serve to reinforce or calculator negative notions of self-image in children of color. For example, Sims (1983) noted in follow-up research to Larrick's (1995) landmark investigation The All-White World of Children's volumes that children of color were still underrepresent in works and that where they were showed stereotypical and pejorative images of children of color still prevailed.

The fairy tale is individual of the longest existing genre of children's literature. [i]or[/i] part of to the other the ages, children have formed mental images of the princesses and other characters depicted in these tales from their representation in the written true copy as well as in the illustrations that have repeatedly accompanied those texts. Fairy tales, therefore, have an important character to play in shaping the selfimage and belief a whole of children. Zipes (1994) frames six lock opener features in how the fairy tale, originally written for adults, was institutionalized for children:

(a) The social function of the fairy tale must be didactic and teach a task that corroborates the code of civility as it was being unfolded at that time; (b) it must be short in the way that that children can remember and memorize it and with equal reason that both adults and children can repeat it orally. .; (c) it must pass the censorship of adults thus that it can be easily circulated; (d) it must address social issues of that kind as obligation, sex roles, class differences, power, and decorum in like manner that it will appeal to adults, especially those who publish and publicize the tales; (e) it must be suitable to be used with children in a schooling situation; and (f) it must reinforce a notion of power within the children of the upper classes and hint ways for them to maintain power, (p 33)

The sixth framing feature or condition for institutionalization, the relationship between the fairy tale and the internalization of notions of power, enables us to recognize the impact that these tales can have upon children of color.

Taxel (1992) argues that there is a "selective tradition in children's literature favoring the perspectives and world view of the dominant social groups" (p 8) and that these traditions "are among the critical factors shaping our beliefs, world views, and perceptions of ourselves and the society we live in" (p 13)

In new times, since the invention of cinema, the visual representation of fairy tale characters has been dominated by means of the Disney version of these tales. of the like kind is the power of visual representation that children wait on to believe that Disney's version of the fairy tale is the real story rather than the "classic" version to which they may or may not have been expos [i]or[/i] part of to the other school or home. Not sole does the Disney version provide visual images for the fairy tale it is depicting, these images and the relative value of clump membership associated with the images are then translated into beliefs children gripe [i]or[/i] grip about status in particular collection membership, in relation to notions of serviceable bad, pretty, and ugly as mirrored in the films. Educators, therefore, ne to be critical of all body s that are introduced to children-pictorial, film, and literary -and the impact that these true copys have on children, particularly in relation to the acculturation and socialization proces However, the challenge at hands several complex issues for the scholar and teacher, particularly someones of color, as it does for children, as Yeoman (1999) and Segura-Mora (2003) attest.