Let's face it, you don't care what the truth is.
It's very strange to me that we live in an age of information that is so accessible, and we don't seem to be able to get get away from being stuck on misinformation. We not so secretly love misinformation.
I personally take very serious issue with misinformation. I would like to think that most people also feel this way, but in my experience and by my estimation, I find that this is the opposite of true. Whether it's very serious Covid denial, or how much the absolutely lovely OZVlog has to constantly debunk myths about the Wizard of OZ set, it's constant absolute nonsense we all know is not true but will not die. The lies never die because people want views and attention for them. Intentional misinformation sells.
I have made it no secret that I truly believe that using Black and Indigenous pain and death for your own attention, clout, social capital and (often monetized) engagement is a legitimate sickness. People are addicted to the attention they garner from it. This has always been an issue, but heightened nonesuch as it has since June of 2020, from people who are posturing themselves as "allies." I am truly disturbed by how comfortable people feel inserting themselves into these conversations, usurping this conversations, and are with monetizing these conversations. If you cared as much as you say you did, you would defer to more informed voices. BIPOC do not need a Lorax, we need you to pass the mic. I truly could not fathom ever feeling that emboldened and entitled to take up space where I do not belong. Least of all framing it as being for someone else's benefit.
These are all things that I have said before, and I will say them again. I will never stop saying them. I will never give up on the truth.
Before moving forward in this conversation, I want to talk about my background and who I am, as I do not want to misrepresent myself. If you are a seasoned reader here (of which I feel as though there are not very many, hahahaha), this is old news. Many of you are going to be here for the first time, and I feel as though disclosure is necessary.
- I am an Indigenous person, although I am not an enrolled tribal member. That does not negate my indigeneity. I believe at some point one of my publicists had written that I was because this person did not understand how enrollment works (to no fault of their own), and this is not true. I am not entirely sure that if it were an option for me that I would do it, as I am more than one Nation and part of enrollment is denying parts of yourself, as you can only be enrolled with one nation at a time. (My mom's people are Indigenous from Mexico, and have no "recognition" of any kind.) Having two white grandmothers also does not negate my indigeneity. I know that some people reading this may use this as a way to say that I am "not really Native." A (very foolish) Disney Adult decided to say that I "didn't even look Native" when I told them to mind their non-Native business about Brer Rabbit. (In case you are wondering, yes, yes, they were, yes they had all the flags and all the hashtags in their bio, and yes, this person was one of the people posturing themselves as "one of the good ones" by sole virtue of being on the Splash Mountain hate train. Charming stuff.)
- I am Indigenous, but not Afro-Indigenous. I defer regularly to Black and Afro-Indigenous voices, and there is an extended list of resources at the end.
- I come from two different Native cultures that have the Brer/ Brother Rabbit figure as a cornerstone of their oral literature and theology. I am going to touch on that a bit later.
- I state these facts so that I do not misrepresent myself; I am not a definitive expert, I am not a cultural ambassador, I am not an elder, I am not the only or more important voice in this. However, the lens in which I look at this is from someone who exists in this legal and cultural context, and is the lens in which I live my life.
- I completed my Master's thesis, but not my degree. I wrote my thesis between 2010 and 2011, wanting to take a break between degrees because my Bachelor's took an extra year to complete (gotta love budget cuts!). But when my best friend died in 2012, and my grandma died the following year, I decided that I didn't want to spend my entire life in school, that academic accolades weren't important to me. It also had hit me that we didn't live forever. I didn't need the validation of an advanced degree, especially since I had become so disenchanted with academia. A lot of academia is focused around personal glory and accolades and being The Person™ of reference, and I just didn't think it was appropriate, nor did I want the responsibility. Some day I may go back, but I also feel like I have too much else to do in this life. I made a modified, digestible version of my thesis available online for free. I am constantly reformatting and adding to it.
- I do have a degree from San Francisco State, a BA, in American Indian Studies (one of the first people who achieved the degree as a full major), graduated cum laude, with an emphasis in constitutional law, as it relates to sovereignty and religious freedom. Before becoming an opera singer, I wanted to work in NAGPRA.
I know that was a lot of exposition, but it is very important to me that I do not want to misrepresent myself. I want to be transparent on who I am as a person and my educational background. I want you to know who I am, where I am coming from, and why I feel the way that I do.
Moving forward, let's talk about some of the truths surround Brer Rabbit, because so much misinformation inundates the conversation. This conversation is bigger and more important than the way that it's being had. This conversation is sad, and painful, and requires compassion and empathy, and we have seen so little of it.
Brer Rabbit is an amalgamation of a sacred figure that existed in both Africa and Native America. (If you want a full breakdown, you can read my entry here). The same figure existed independently and predating contact with one another, but the figure of Brer Rabbit that we know and understand today specifically exists because of Native influence. This is not to take away from his role in African diasporic and DACS oral literature, or his use as a freedom fighting tool. The West African Hare/Tsuro, and the Great Hare of Many Names are the same figure; the syncretism of these figures exemplifies the painful shared history, but also the resiliency of the human spirit, and the sacred relationship between Black and Native people. It’s nigh universally agreed by both Native and Black American scholars that the Brer Rabbit we know has both Black, and Cherokee and Creek origins, with a lot of influence taken from the Rabbit of the Northeast and Great Lakes Area. The figure (with the same exact stories) also exists in Indigenous Mexico. It should be noted that not all Native people have Brer Rabbit, just the ones relevant to this discussion.
Joel Chandler Harris is cited as having made Brer Rabbit famous, but did not invent Brer Rabbit. You can read about the life of Joel Chandler Harris here, and the contextualization of the era in which these stories were transcribed here. He did not write these stories. He clumsily transcribed them from real-life elders. If you don't like or trust his retellings, there are contemporarily published Gullah and Native versions from the exact same time period. The first ever publication of a piece of Brer Rabbit literature appeared in a Cherokee(Tsalagi) newspaper. Scholarship overwhelmingly supports that Brer Rabbit is of African and Native origins. Yet you still have people who are trying to say that these are Harris' inventions, or that Disney invented these figures, which just is not true. You can want the fallacy that Disney invented these figures, but no matter how much you want it to be true, it's not going to be.
The Disney versions are not even inaccurate retellings of the oral literature. Author Greg Anderson Elysée (who is wonderful, go buy his stuff) recently wrote about this on his trip to Disney World last year. Generally, I find that people who are cultural experts, people who actually know what they're talking about, people like Greg and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, have a completely different take than people who are trying to get you to click on their YouTube videos. Imagine that. The Disney version has had such a last impact that other non-Disney media now ascribed Brer Bear as having a larger role in the stories than he actually did.
Brer Rabbit exists outside of the appropriation paradigm, but there is a strong unwillingness to accept this, and this is in large part to Disney. Disney has never corrected the misinformation; it has never fully addressed the damage it has done to other people's (non-Abrahamic) religions and religious figures. Disney absolutely has a responsibility to this oral literature and these cultural figures that it has flat out refused to remediate. They would have people freely believing that the Brer Rabbit figure himself is nefarious, and not that this is their, as in Disney's, fault.
Disney has always been this negligent. When confronted with the immediate backlash of their film Song of the South, they shelved the idea of animating more Brer Rabbit stories, which would have given the Black voice actors who worked on the film more work. Instead of advocating for these artists, the company was wholly complacent in making these people pariahs over their roles in the film. Although all of the Black artists who worked for Disney had personally, repeatedly stated that Walt himself was respectful of both them as people and their artistry, the Disney company has failed them. Instead of taking responsibility for their film, they have been fully content letting artists like Nick Stewart, Johnny Lee, and James Baskett take the brunt of the criticism.
While Disney pretends that its hands are tied, and that the redemption of these figures isn't well within their capabilities, the family of Joel Chandler Harris understands their role of remediation mistakes and healing. The Wren's Nest, the Harris ancestral home, has been turned into an oral literature and cultural preservation center. It offers traditional story telling sessions so that this oral literature can be experienced the way that it was intended to. This is how you fix things in a meaningful way.
Splash Mountain in Walt Disney World shuttered its barn doors for the last time this past weekend. It created such a messy spectacle, and there is now rumor that Disneyland's Splash is just going close this Sunday unceremoniously to avoid a repeat. I am not sure if this is true, and again, I do not want to spread misinformation, but in the event that this is true, it would exemplify the cowardice they have displayed for the last 76 years. The messy spectacle of last Sunday included guests with specific intent to go to the closure to mock those trying to get in their last goodbyes, filming Neurodivergent children who were crying without their consent, with the purposes of mocking them. And, before you ask, yes, there were people who consider themselves "heroes" solely because they are anti-Splash Mountain.
Nothing about that is allyship, none of that is to the benefit of the people this is supposedly supposed to be in support of.
Attractions come and go, as is the ever-changing nature of Disney parks. Splash Mountain's days were always numbered, because nothing is safe from change. It was based on an IP they couldn't continue to make money off of anymore, and the Disney princess media franchise is the 6th most lucrative franchise in the world.
But Splash Mountain isn't just a ride, it's based on someone's misused religious beliefs.
Splash Mountain's connection to Song of the South is enough to change it, there is no reason to ascribe nefarious ~hidden meanings~ to the attraction. There is no hidden meaning, there is no hidden agenda. I am not saying this because I want this to be true, I am not saying this because I am fond of the attraction. I am saying this because it IS true, and inventing things like Brer Rabbit being an allegory for "a happy slave going back to the plantation" or calling Splash Mountain "the slave catcher ride" does more harm than it does good. Brer Rabbit's return to his "home sweet home" is beat for beat Splash Mountain following the Hero's Journey. It is the same journey as Luke Skywalker, Alice, Dorothy Gale, Candide, and Bilbo go on. The dip into the Laughing Place on the Splash Mountain attractions mirrors Nanabhozo's journey into the water caverns of the Underworld, but that's not what that section of the attractions actually is. That sounds good, it sounds like an attractive factoid that would make me sound smart, but it's not true.
The facts that do actually exist, are enough. The attraction's attachment to Song of the South is enough. The fact is, Splash Mountain is based on a movie that is deeply flawed. Even if, as some have argued, that it wasn't intentionally malicious, it unfortunately was. Sometimes, we hurt people unintentionally.
I am also not here as a non-Black person of color to weigh in on Song of the South, there are enough way smarter, more informed and more appropriate people to speak on this.
The one thing I am going to touch on is what gets overlooked when discussing Song of the South --that Disney, following the steps of Joel Chandler Harris, used African and Native oral literature and theology that had been used for resistance for a Lost Cause narrative. And the reason why the YouTube and the podcast grifters never mention this, is because they don't actually understand the weight of what they are speaking on. They don't actually understand the extent of what they are talking about means. They have discovered that this topic is topical (and lucrative) and gets them a lot of attention. They sure know how to do that. At the end of the day, they get to put it away and be done with, and the people whom this actually effects are going to be dealing with these consequences indefinitely.
My grandmother had this really great saying, "consider the source." I think it's very applicable here. Where you get your information from and the intention of their relaying of the information is so important. The truth of the matter is, it doesn't matter how much truth you tell, people don't want it. The OZVlog deals with this day in and day out debunking people who are spreading harmful misinformation about the film The Wizard of OZ. Judy Garland had a devastatingly tragic life, there is absolutely no reason to add to her suffering. When people create mythos like this, and invent posthumous suffering of people who suffered greatly throughout their mortal life times, they end up detracting from actual human suffering. In their quest to peddle salacious clickbait, they end up taking away from the actual events. There is such a fundamental absence of compassion on display here.
I often find myself asking, where is our empathy?
The truth is this Brer Rabbit conversation should have been a very profound moment of collective healing and reclamation between Black and Native people, and the people who need to have the conversation can't have it. Instead, this conversation has been monopolized, dare I even say colonized, by YouTube and podcast grifters trying to capitalize on the suffering of others. Instead of turning against the company whose fault this is in the first place (the company that JUST donated to Don't Say Gay --which passed--, regardless if they retroactively denounced it, and whose CEO rewards himself constantly with bonuses whilst his employees starve), people are further embracing it.
I am not saying that Splash Mountain is good or bad, or should stay or go. That's none of my business. I am saying that a conversation that is incredibly sad and incredibly painful has become a pissing contest between two groups of equally spoiled brats. I said what I said.
The truth is readily available. The literature and the scholarship surrounding Brer Rabbit abounds. There are multiple, beautiful intersectional collections of comparative literature that speak on this. People don't care. For whatever reason, saying that Brer Rabbit is a literal god, a symbol of resistance, and a figure of shared oral literature and theology has become a "conservative talking point." What about saying that makes people feel so threatened that it's going to take away from them being some kind of hero?
I know that my loyalty is never going be to with engagement or approval of a non-Native audience on social media; my loyalty is always going to be with my grandfathers' peoples, and my Ancestors. My compassion is always going to be towards real people. I am not sorry that I care more that Johnny Lee, who was a real person who lived and died, was too poor when he died to have a headstone and still doesn't have one than I do about a fictional cartoon princess getting a ride. I care about the sacrifices that my Ancestors, even my grandfathers and great uncles, made so that I could know what little they knew and retained. I always going to be reverent and compassionate towards BIPOC artists of the past who made sacrifices so that artists and performers like me could be where we are now.
The hallmark of this tale is theft: theft of stolen people to a stolen land, stolen sacred stories, stolen history, stolen sacred synergy, stolen credit, stolen fame, and then disposed of after bleeding every last penny possible. They exploited and squandered the sacred stories with a shared history about resilience and resistance used to promote a ❕ supremacist narrative. Even if it was not intentional, as some have claimed, it happened. It is absolutely and utterly disgraceful. I refer this essay which speaks to the sadness and disappointment about this gratuitous waste; how the misuse of Brer Rabbit has ruined him, probably forever. He's reached the end of his profitability after non-Black ( and non-Indigenous) people have milked every last penny out of this sacred figure they've cheapened. They've purposely allowed the one actual cultural representation in any of the Disney Canon or parks to run into the ground disgracefully before being discarded. If that doesn’t epitomize the vulgarity of late-stage capitalism, I don’t know what does.
There’s a Brer Rabbit story about soul searching. In that story, we actually learn that Brer Rabbit’s first name is Riley (which, to Disney’s credit, has been mentioned in its various Uncle Remus anthologies and even in the Brer Rabbit comics). Brer Rabbit decides to visit “The Witch” of various names (which, depending on which version you read, could be anyone from a spider monster to another rabbit) after several bouts of being tricked and losing his self-confidence. It’s not simply a matter of his fragile ego being bruised, his core is truly shaken. He no longer knows who he is. Not unlike the Wizard of OZ, The Witch directs “Son Riley Rabbit” on a quest of a various number of seemingly impossible tasks, which inadvertently prove to Brer Rabbit, and the reader, that Brer Rabbit already had what he was looking for within himself the whole time. (There are Native and Gullah equivalents to this, should you not care for the Harris version.) Brer Rabbit gets himself back, because he never lost himself, but he had to do the hard work to see that.
We have everything that we need to do this the Right Way.
We just have to do it.
If you would like further reading and education on Brer Rabbit (and other such matters):
That the People Might Live by Jace Weaver
When Brer Rabbit Meets Coyote, edited by Jonathan Brennan
Tales of Uncle Remus, More Tales of Uncle Remus, Further Tales of Uncle Remus, and Last Tales of Uncle Remus by Julius Lester
A Disney Villains Retrospective Part 7: Brer Fox and Brer Bear
From Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome to Self-Determination and Greatness, Volume 1
Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
From Bobtail to Brer Rabbit: Native American Influences on Uncle Remus
Other Words: American Indian Literature, Law, And Culture by Jace Weaver
The Trickster in African American Literature (from the National Humanities Center)
The Power of Black Magic by Cerise L. Glenn, Landra J. Cunningham
American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) (comparative literature)
The Annotated African American Folktales (The Annotated Books) by Dr. Henry Louis Gates
Favorite African Folktales by Nelson Mandela
The Tar Baby and the Tomahawk: Race and Ethnic Images in American Children's Literature, 1880-1939 by Amanda Gailey
The Habit of Sir Rabbit: Harris, Hurston, and Welty by James Skimkus
Bo Rabbit Smart For True: Tall Tales from the Gullah
Cherokee Tales and Disney Films Explored (via the Wayback Machine)
Special shout outs and thank you's to Victoria who runs the OZVlog accounts, and to my friend Colin of ColinLooksBack. Both of these people dedicate a lot of their time and energy towards historical media analysis and preservation with accuracy, care and compassion--we love to see it!
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