Okay, so I finished my Black History Month project, chronologically charting every Black character in Disney’s animated features.

On the plus side: I did it! It took a looong time, but I think it was worth doing and could prove a valuable resource for folks in the future.

On the negative side: I did it. In under a month. The month of February, a.k.a. the shortest month of the year. If I were charting White characters, it would’ve taken me well over a year. Well over two years, probably. The truth is, there simply are not enough POC in Disney’s animated films. This is changing in recent years, but still…the percentages are way less than even 10% per film. (The Princess and the Frog being the obvious exception.) Heck, out of NINETEEN films, Pixar has only EIGHT characters voiced by Black actors or actresses – and NONE of them are the leads. What’s more, it took almost TEN YEARS before they cast their first POC in any role!

That said, Disney is not tone deaf to people and/or money. With Black Panther making all of the money it has, you’d better believe they are going to drastically kick up the amount of racial representation you see in their films. While this is unquestionably a good thing, my only worry is that if a film featuring POC ‘fails’ at the box office, this will signal to Disney that this ‘trend’ is over and that they should go back to business as usual, i.e. one character of color per film – and almost always a side-character.

(Think this is impossible? The Princess and the Frog made $104,400,899 at the box office, yet Disney used this perceived ‘failure’ as their excuse to cancel all future 2D/traditionally animated films. It’s been ten years, and that decision has yet to be reversed.)

My hope for the future: That Disney continues making the same sort of stellar animated films they’ve been making in recent years, only they add more POC to the voice casts and more characters of color to their films. While this is occasionally labeled ‘pandering’ or ‘forcing things’ by some White folks (full disclosure: I’m White!), and you sometimes read stuff like, “Why does race matter? Why can’t it just be about making good movies?” the fact is, IT DOES MATTER. Kids – and tweens and teens and adults and senior citizens – should be able to see themselves regularly and positively reflected in the films they watch. It’s just that simple.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Please keep it courteous!