When Disney announced last year that an feature-length animated with a black heroine was in the works, I was beyond thrilled. Growing up, I was a major Disney buff — like most children of the 80s, I presume — and although I still have a great amount of affection for the classics, as I grew older my disappointment in the company’s apparent lack of interest in including black characters in its animated films began to overshadow that childhood love. But now they’re making a black, animated Disney film! My future daughters will have their own animated heroine to look up to! Unfortunately, based on information from people in the know, I might have gotten excited too soon. Disney, a company with a racially-murky past that won’t stay in the vault no matter how hard execs try to keep it hidden, appears to be having quite a few problems coming up with a storyline that isn’t offensive. Fancy that.

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They have names like “Jungle Jitters,” “Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves,” and “All This and Rabbit Stew (see left),” and feature cartoon images of blacks that would get an animator at the Disney Channel fired before you could say “Sambo” if he or she tried to produce them now. But these Warner Bros. shorts were made in the 30s and 40s and a part of a group of cartoons dubbed the Censored 11. None of us are supposed to be able to see them (hence, the Censored 11). Yet, many of them can be found on YouTube. What gives?

According to the New York Times, reps from Warner Bros. are sending out cease and desists as fast as they can, but it’s really hard to keep a video off of the internet once it’s already gone up. Does it matter, though? How harmful are these old, racist images in a modern world?

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• The drugs and guns found on his tour bus weren’t his, says Lil Wayne. In other words, he pleaded not guilty to charges. [E!]

• G.W. Bush mistakes Al Sharpton’s daughter for his wife. Why were Sharpton and Bush fraternizing to begin with? Oh, Black History Month. [FBNY]

• Whatever happened to just googling and Myspace/Facebook-stalking your dates? [Jossip]

• The mastermind behind the Cheetah Girls, which has netted Disney millions and millions, lives in a cramped studio in Manhattan. Story old as time… [LAT]

• Juvenile…marijuana possession…yawn… [E!]

Cracked compiled a list of the nine most racist Disney characters. High up, as you can imagine, was the little slave-girl centaur in Fantasia who so dutifully polished the blond centaur’s feet. And don’t get me started on Uncle Remus and Song of the South. But it should come as no surprise that many of the comments on the post are worse than even the most egregious of Disney’s stereotypical characters. At least we can blame the Disney animators’ ignorance on the era.

Years from now, if four Florida State football prospects win the Superbowl, they probably won’t be saying, “I’m going to Disney World.” Why? Because the theme park security banned them for life. The boys, whose fathers include a prominent civil rights attorney and a Disney manager, were banned by Disney under their new “anti-gang, anti-loitering” rules for hanging around Downtown Disney for a prolonged period of time and not leaving when security asked.

Parents of the youths wonder whether there’s another reason: They’re black.

“I keep thinking to myself, ‘This is crazy,’ ” said Mark Nugent, stepfather of Vincent Williams, football star at Ridge Community High School in Polk County. “Once they realized they weren’t gangbangers, why didn’t they let them go? They took their pictures. They fingerprinted them. And treated them like common criminals.”

Because of concerns about a rise in ganglike activity at Downtown Disney lately, loitering or “any other inappropriate behavior” by groups of youths is not going to be tolerated, spokeswoman Jacquee Polak said Tuesday.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, 45 of the 46 people banned for life from Disney during the past two weekends were black or Hispanic. Because when white kids hang out at a theme park, it’s all in good fun, and when black and brown kids do it, it’s gang activity.

[OS via RR]

Because the big and small screen celebrities wanted to have something to do while the serious thespians (and Usher — not sure where he fits in) were at the Tony Awards in NYC, and because attending AIDS benefits is just the right thing to do, a bunch of celebrities and their kids showed up at the Disney-sponsored “A Time For Heroes Carnival” benefit for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. That’s Blair Underwood with his son, Paris, above. Below, check out a bunch of celebs in their weekend casual-wear.

As the signatures add up on a petition in favor of re-releasing Song of the South, the Birth of a Nation of children’s movies, Disney has remained undecided on whether it will make the highly sought after 1946 film available for purchase or keep it tucked away.

Disney officials admitted recently that they are concerned that the images and messages in the movie would be misinterpreted by modern audiences without “appropriate context”. The movie is about a kind-hearted, black “plantation worker” named Uncle Remus who spins heart-warming tales to the white children of “big house inhabitants.” The bigger concern should be that kids will interpret the movie correctly, with or without disclaimers. I mean, it is what it is. All the more reason to keep it in the vault and let the Frog Princess (the in-production Disney animated feature starring a black heroine) alter the company’s pretty dismal racial legacy.

[AlterNet]