Meghan Markle or The Little Mermaid, why the hate for a Black princess?

Other than a slight eye roll at yet another big budget remake of a classic, Disney's new live action film should have been largely unremarkable. Ah, but there's a twist.

In the original - the 32-year-old original - Ariel has red hair and blue eyes. She's also best pals with a fish called Flounder and takes guidance from a talking crab. But this is all completely believable. What's too much is Disney replacing a ginger mermaid with black actress Halle Bailey.

Social media did what social media sadly does best and thousands of YouTube users - grown adults - made use of their time leaving more than two million dislikes on a video of the trailer.

They also posted disparaging and derogatory comments under a flimsy guise of pretending to be upset about the historical inaccuracy of the mermaid.

At what point do we tell them mermaids aren't real? Do we tell them?

An anonymous computer scientist - presumably another grown adult - went to the effort of using artificial intelligence to whiten Halle Bailey's skin in the trailer. A Twitter account then shared the new video with a disclaimer saying it was for "educational purposes" only and not racist.

What the lesson was supposed to be, other than that racists are a bit light on thinking, no one was sure.

In a genius piece of I'm-not-racist-but, the Conservative political commentator Matt Walsh (again, a grown man) went to the bother of couching his concerns in terms of biological reality. Deep ocean-dwelling creatures are pale, he argued, because the sun doesn't reach them.

The character of Ariel "should be totally pale and skeletal where you can see her skull through her face." Perhaps in the Halloween remake. But if you'd rather the Little Mermaid terrified children as the stuff of nightmares than have black skin, it's time to honestly assess your motivations.

These people, furious at a black Disney princess, despite the great wealth of white Disney princesses to choose from, are the same people furious at the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle for her behaviour at the Queen's funeral before she's even left the house.

What is it about black princesses that have them so riled up, eh?

The days of "political correctness gone mad" now seem so quaint in the face of the rage against "wokeness". There's been a fair bit of poorly masked racism floating around in response to remakes. Amazon's new Lord of Rings series this month also had detractors frothing at the mouth with concern about a lack of faithfulness to Tolkien's world.

The author, so it goes, meant for his elves, hobbits and dwarves to be white. White, as nature intended them. The hobbits, dwarves and elves.

Characters in the new adaptation are played by black and Asian characters and up with this, these oafs will not put.

Grown adults, though, getting themselves distressed about realistic depictions of fantasy creatures. There is no realistic depiction of a fantasy creature. That's the very definition of fantasy.

In a bleak world, wholesome delight is hard to come by and should be met with thanks. This week a gorgeous video was doing the rounds on social media showing the reactions of black girls to the Little Mermaid trailer. Heartwarming does not even touch it.

"She's brown, like me," gasps one little lady when she spies Halle Bailey.

If you are white and male and middle class then representation likely means very little to you because popular culture is saturated with your image, it is dripping with it.

Imagine what it must be like to never see yourself as the protagonist or the hero.

Imagine, again, what it must be like to finally see yourself depicted in a happy-ever-after scenario - as a Disney princess or real life royalty - and see this met with inexplicable disgust.

If you can stretch your imagination to find fellow feeling with fish women and elves, it really shouldn't be too hard to empathise with real life little girls.