Goodbye Cameron Boyce

This weekend I had to explain to my ten year old daughter that her crush had passed away. Her and I had watched Cameron Boyce in every episode of  “Jessie” and she loved the movies “Descendants” and we were anxiously awaiting the third movie due later in the summer. My daughter liked Cameron because she related to him. I’m always preaching that representation matters because I have seen it first hand. Growing up, there weren’t many cartoons or shows that I could relate to but luckily things are different for my children because the world is changing and becoming more diverse. While doing press for the first “Descendants” movie, she saw an interview of Cameron. It was then that she learned that he was half black. I will never forget it she said “hey, he is black but doesn’t look like it, that’s like me. He has freckles like me.”  I explained that yes he was mixed just like she was so it didn’t look as if he was black. He looked racially ambiguous, which was a big word meaning he could play a range of parts not just black. Like my daughter who is Mexican and Black but she is also racially ambiguous. Some days which is everyday looks more Mexican than Black. She felt connected to him because he was like her, mixed, racially ambiguous with freckles. In watching his interviews over the years you could tell he was a good kid. There were no tabloid stories or photos of him doing crazy things. Just a great kid with his whole life ahead of him so this one hits different. It’s ironic that Cameron passed the same week Disney announced that Ariel would be played by a wonderful and gifted singer and actress Halle Bailey, who is totally worthy of this role and will SLAY singing “Part of your World”. However, racist trolls flooded the internet upset that Ariel a fictional redheaded mermaid was going to be portrayed by a black actress. Disney went seventy years before they put out a movie with a black Princess and she was a frog during 80 Percent of the movie. The people complaining can’t understand how my daughter felt when she realized Cameron was just like her. For seventy years Disney made movies with ONLY white leads. It seems petty to argue over if a mermaid can be black when a Mother woke up this morning without her son. So while people complain and whine about who Disney cast, I think of all of the little boys and girls who will watch it and feel SEEN & REPRESENTED Because Disney finally understands that diversity and representation matter!