Rachel Muir took her three-year-old daughter Samara to a Disney-themed event being held at Watergardens Shopping Center in Taylors Lakes, Australia, last month. The mother and daughter waited in line with many other children and their parents to try out the snow pit.
Maybe it was because the lines were so long, and everyone had been standing there for over two hours, or maybe it was just for no reason at all, but the woman in front of the pair turned around and looked at Samara and said, “I don’t know why you’re dressed up for because Queen Elsa isn’t black,” Rachel Muir told the Courier.
“I asked the woman what she meant by the comment and then one of the woman’s young daughters screwed up her face, she pointed at Samara and said “you’re black and black is ugly.” Rachel said Samara burst into tears and covered her face.
“I looked around the line and there were little girls of all different races lining up dressed as their favourite Disney characters,” Ms Muir said. “We were in Melbourne, one of the most multicultural places in the world.” Rachel and her daughter are aboriginals, the original native people of Australia.
While Rachel Muir could not believe the insensitivity of the woman and her two daughters who had hurt her child so cruelly, she held Samara’s hand and waited to get into the snow pit. But over the next few days, Samara withdrew from the world, says her mother. She didn’t even want to go to her Aboriginal dance class, which she loves.
“When I asked why she didn’t want to go, she pointed at the skin on her arm and asked why she was black,” Muir said. She explained to her daughter she was black “because God gave you that skin color, because you’re a proud blackfella like mum.”
After going on local television and commenting on her Facebook page about the incident, Rachel Muir wants people to know that no one is born a racist, it is learned. “The saddest part of it all is that racism is alive and well and the next generation is being subjected to it,” Ms Muir said. “Nobody is born into this world a racist. It is learnt behaviour. It can be changed.”
There is some good news to come out of this story. Samara and her mother were contacted by Disney on Ice Dare yo Dream, and Samara has been invited to the show, and she is going to be a part of the show.
