This just makes me angry. Of course, Disney did some stuff decades ago, which people today would find "racist", but so did all the other animation studios back then. Sunflower the black centaur has been cut from "Fantasia" for a long time, because she of course has to be the maid to the more beautiful white centaurs. And even the scene with the Indians in "Peter Pan" gets plenty of hatred nowadays, because it shows many old stereotypes about the Native Americans. Even the crows from "Dumbo" and the Siamese cats from "Lady & the Tramp" get mentioned some times, but I guess that since they are fully animals, people will cut them a little bit more slack. But if you take a look at movies from the 1940s and the 1950s, you will soon find that ethnical minorities were portrayed in this way. And nobody can go back in time to change all that, no matter how much we would want to.
As for "The Jungle Book" though, these old accusations of racism doesn't hold water at all. I can see why people can become offended by the other scenes, that I have mentioned above. They were based on the old stereotypes, and people have become very sensitive to that. But that is not what we see in "The Jungle Book". There is no proof for that the monkeys were supposed to be black people. King Louie was based on voice actor Louie Prima, an Italian-American. And that means that he was white. And please tell me what is supposed to be "black" about the character anyway? Do you perhaps mean that only black people can scat or sing jazz songs? I'm sorry, but it seems like Mr Prima had disproved that notion already back in 1967! And furtermore, King Louie sings about how much he wants to be like Mowgli, who happens to be first non-white protagonist in any Disney movie! So how is this scene about black people wanting to be just like white people again?
Intelligence and purity.
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