re: 'The Little Mermaid' Official Trailer | Disney

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Uh, of course it is. Being white is a "central premise" of the little mermaid in that in every visual telling of said story, the FICTIONAL character is white just as the FICTIONAL characters of Blade and Black Panther are black. But one is an ok target to race change and the others are, undeniably, not. It's no big deal, ultimately, but it's absolutely apples to apples. Both are fictional characters. Of course, even if they aren't fictional, Hollywood will still do what it does, like with Hamilton. I seriously doubt we will get a "reimagining" of Harriet Tubman's story starring an asian actress.

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It feels like you're intentionally missing the point here. Being white isn't the premise of Ariel's character....largely because she's half fish after all. Her being portrayed as white was only done because that tends to be the "default" portrayal for most western stories, but beyond that there is nothing about Ariel's story that requires her to be white or any specific race for that matter. She can be white, black, asian, native, etc. and nothing about her story has to change. Where as the character of Black Panther and Blade are explicitly black stories written to describe black experiences. Everything from their character origins, their stories, how they interact in society is all written with the backdrop of being black. Same is true of characters like Steve Rogers, Magneto, or Charles Xavier. Changing their race would require changing their origins and major points of their story (e.g., a black person would have never been presented as the face of the US Army in 1940 for Rogers and Jewish people in concentration camps were primarily white eastern European in origin).

With regards to Hamilton....it's not meant to be a history play. It's a reimagining for the purposes of telling a broader story about race and immigration. It isn't nor is it intended to be a biopic of the actual Hamilton. Even still, white people have been cast as people of color from real life and fiction for decades and I doubt you cared.

Harriet Tubman was a real person whose entire story is about being a former slave and helping other black people escape slavery. Her race is central to every story one would tell about her. Even with that in mind, there was a legitimate push by a hollywood producer to cast Julia Roberts in a HT movie.