Column: Years before 'Mermaid' casting, Grandma knew representation matters

Turn on the TV, change to Channel 16 ... Sidney Poitier is on "The Tonight Show."

The phone calls were a regular feature of my childhood. The messenger was my Grandma, and the message was clear: A Black performer − someone who looked like us − was on television.

Sometimes it was an actor guest-starring on a TV drama, maybe it was a female singer in a weeklong role on a game show. It didn't matter if Grandma was a particular fan of the performer − yes, she alerted us to Jackson 5 TV sightings − or how small the role.

All those years ago, Grandma knew something that I couldn't fully appreciate as a kid.

Representation matters.

That phrase has been used lately in connection to the live-action version of "The Little Mermaid." As you may have heard, Disney has cast Black actress and singer Halle Bailey as Ariel. And videos of Black and brown girls reacting to the release of the movie's trailer have gone viral.

I thought about my grandmother and her phone alerts after watching those videos. Back then, I didn't understand the reason for her calls. While TV was hardly a diverse medium in those pre-cable, pre-streaming days, there were shows such as "Good Times," "The Jeffersons" and the groundbreaking miniseries "Roots" offering portrayals of African Americans, some better written than others.

But that wasn't always the case, as my grandmother knew all too well.

And she understood that it's critical to see yourself reflected in the world in which you live: in positions of prominence and leadership, most definitely, in such key roles as teacher and doctor, of course, but also in everyday life, in pop culture, in the TV shows and movies that permeate our world. Seeing these images can be a source of affirmation and pride; it can open young minds to possibilities.

So how big of a deal is representation when we're talking about a Disney character? Your answer may change after viewing the reactions, captured and posted by parents, of children seeing a princess who looks like them.

In one video, a girl's mouth drops open as she sees Bailey as Ariel for the first time; in another, a girl grins and says "She's like me." One little girl's eyes well with tears as she watches.

Of course, not everyone is thrilled with the new Ariel. Some call it "historically inaccurate" casting, a rather strange argument to make about a mermaid.

I think my grandmother would have appreciated the new Ariel. She would have understood that although many things have changed in the decades since she was calling us to announce that Cicely Tyson was starring in "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," one thing remains true.

Representation matters.

Alesia I. Redding is The Tribune's audience engagement editor.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: 'The Little Mermaid' casting shows that representation matters