A college student searches for racial microaggressions at the theme park.
A student at the University of Arizona wrote a lengthy op-ed about how upset he was over the “racial microaggressions” he saw at Disney World — such as people getting angry at a woman who was cutting in line.
In a piece titled “Diary of a Mad Brown Student: Racism in Disney World,” Julian Cardenas explains that although he had been “a huge Disney fan since [his] conception,” he was disappointed by his trip to Disney World because of all of the “racist and hateful” things he saw there.
For example: According to Cardenas, people in line at Splash Mountain started yelling at a woman who didn’t speak English because she was rushing through the line looking for her child and “trying to ask people to allow her to advance through the line.”
“I immediately heard people yell back at her, telling her to go to the back of the line. I heard people complain about her shouting. I saw people avoid her questions. . . . While waiting to board the ride, I wondered if the line’s general rudeness was caused by tiredness and stress from having to cover the park, or if her lack of English proficiency and diversity was seen as threatening.”
The other example of racism was that Cardenas “heard people complain about another group of people who were speaking a language other than English” on the It’s a Small World ride, even though “It’s A Small World is literally a ride about the diversity of the world.”
“These were just two small, non-confrontational instances of racial microaggressions I witnessed in the Magic Kingdom,” Cardenas writes.
“It’s ironic to witness these microaggressions in a place dedicated to making dreams come true,” Cardenas writes. “If Disney’s guests were as dedicated to that cause as much as Disney is, perhaps then the world might actually be a small world after all.”
Disney’s guests are not “dedicated to” “making dreams come true”? First of all, probably not — because most of them are just probably trying to get their kids in and out without getting into some kind of family-destroying fight or spending too much money on mouse hats — but writing a piece that characterizes the overall group of guests at the park in a negative light is absurdly unfair, especially when you’re talking about something as serious as racism, and especially when you have only one actual piece of evidence to back up what you’re saying.
The example I’m referring to, of course, is the one where people were apparently complaining about other people speaking a different language. As for that Splash Mountain line-cutting incident, Cardenas himself admits that he “wondered” whether that one really was caused by racism — because people saw the woman’s “diversity” as “threatening” — or if it was just “tiredness and stress from having to cover the park.”
If we’re being honest with ourselves, I think we can all agree that that non-racism explanation would make sense. After all, it really is hard to imagine a place more irritating than Disney World: It’s hot; it’s exhausting; it’s covered in germs. A bottle of water costs $45, and you are never more than 30 seconds away from having to hear the blood-curdling scream of some kid having a meltdown because his mom won’t buy him Mickey Mouse ears. And yes, the lines are very, very long — making it completely understandable that the knee-jerk response of some of these frustrated park-goers would be to yell at a woman who is trying to rush ahead, regardless of her race or English-speaking ability.
Call me crazy, but I kind of feel like if you’re going to write a piece titled “Diary of a Mad Brown Man: Racism at Disney World” centered around the park’s “racist and hateful” environment, you’re going to have to have more than one concrete example of seeing something “racist and hateful” happening. There’s certainly nothing wrong with calling out racism where you see it, but reaching to interpret anything and everything as “racist” and making overblown claims is only going to make people take the serious charge of “racism” less seriously.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.