My name is Gerald Whitman, I am 56 years old, and I refuse to watch “The Little Mermaid”—but not because she’s black or anything.

I don’t hold the prejudices you think I do and I’m offended that you think my beliefs boil down to anything more than just personal preference. As a 56-year-old man, people don’t always take me for a devoted Disney princess fan.

I’m not racist, and I would hope that my vote for Ben Carson in the 2016 presidential election proves that. Now that we have those allegations under the rug, all I wanted to share is that I don’t think it’s too much to ask for more ginger representation in the media. My daughter is ginger and I know it would mean the world to her. 

I think.

She’s 26. 

She doesn’t see me anymore. 

Some nights I stare at my ceiling as I contemplate my past, begging God for a chance to rewrite my history. I don’t know where I went wrong with her or what I did to ruin our relationship. There were days when everything felt like it was going to be alright. When her smile met mine, I was hit with the assurance that I was a good father after all. 

Everything changed when she brought her boyfriend over. Things were said, bonds were broken. He seemed fine―even normal―but just to be safe, I thought it was my parental responsibility to convey the suspicions he ignited within me. Look, all I said was I didn’t trust him―but not because he was black or anything.

But this isn’t about my daughter or her boyfriend. This is about “The Little Mermaid.” And in a movie where characters break into song and crabs and fish talk, I draw the line at a mermaid being black—but not because she’s black or anything. 

Truth be told, I don’t mind seeing minorities on the big screen; I just think we should promote original POC stories rather than colonizing the rare white leads we get in this day and age. Am I advocating for more original minority-led films? Yes. Will I find something to complain about when said films come to fruition? Yes. Will I go see these minority-led films? No. With time, will I grow upset over them regardless? Yes. 

I, a 56-year-old man, need this fish princess to be white in order to feel represented. It pains me that Ariel is just the beginning in this new wave of minority princesses. Have I cared about princess movies before this? No. To be quite frank, I never gave them a second thought. But suddenly, it’s essential to me that we keep this new line of princesses as pure as the royal family.

Sorry, not “pure”, I meant white. That’s on me.       

It’s integral to her story that Snow White stays Caucasian. Her eyes carry her German ancestry with her, centuries of culture embedded with every ounce of melanin in her skin, or rather, lack thereof. You change her skin, you change her character. You may say that goes against everything Martin Luther King stood for, but I say, with total honesty, I don’t know who that is. 

I’ll never forgive any of you for this new online movement to cast Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Rapunzel. When I’m not thinking of how my daughter cut ties with me, I’m left wondering where our dignity as a nation has gone. A single tear spills from my eye as I try to understand something I can only label as blasphemy—but not because she’s black or anything. Because she’s not. I’m not racist; I just believe, for the sake of every patriotic bone in my body, and especially after 9/11, that it’s in poor taste to write stories about brown people in towers. 

America is a melting pot of cultures, and I think we should celebrate that. Just don’t do it so loudly because I, a middle-aged man, am still a fragile little boy at heart.

Here I am, Gerald Whitman, 56 years old, single, no longer a father, and at my most vulnerable, begging on my knees for you to stop removing whiteness from our media because before we know it, our flag will just be red and blue.