A popular Facebook group’s really shedding light on the truly nasty natures of our times.
Though the original “Christian’s Against the Little Mermaid (Boycott Halle Bailey)” group – yes, with the misplaced apostrophe – seems to have been removed from the mega social media site, it certainly made its unfortunate mark.
According to Friendly Atheist, the page had garnered nearly 33,000 members claiming to protest “liberal propaganda” and obviously Disney’s casting of the young Grown-ish actress as its live-action Little Mermaid.
This is probably not news to you. While some have expressed their congratulations and come to the defense of the 19-year-old Bailey, including Jodi Benson, who’s voiced the red-headed mermaid since 1989, and Spider-Man: Far From Home‘s Zendaya, there are (unfortunately) a great many number of people who think Bailey’s not right for the role.
And as you can imagine, this criticism’s not based on her qualifications as an actress, but because of the color of her skin. Apparently, a black woman playing Ariel, a literal half-person, half-fish character conceived by Hans Christian Andersen nearly 200 years ago, isn’t realistic.
Since I believe my frustration’s more than visible, I’m not even going to touch on it any further. But Friendly Atheist’s brought up an interesting point about the hateful Facebook group, having done some research: they believe that it’s all fake.
Now that suggestion’s not referring to the racial hate-speech embalmed within it. No, unfortunately that’s all too real. The idea’s that the group itself was a ploy to tie Christianity with racism. A quick look at the page’s history indicates that before it’d taken on its latest form, the group was actually called “Love, compassion, & understanding.”
Those are obviously very separate ideals, and probably a source of intrigue for anyone looking in from the outside. But regardless of its reasons for existing, having formed another platform in which hate speech can be communicated is, in my opinion, an entirely shameful act.