I’m amazed that Disney let them use it in the movie Fletch Lives. To this day I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a short snippet or two of the original film, but I’ve seen plenty of references, often parodies like this.
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There have also been official Disney releases on home video outside the US. Probably an even bigger source.
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They could also rethink the Jungle boatride thingy with the awful animatronic ‘natives’ that are a part of the ride.
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And they can breathe new life into Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!
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As far as I know there’s nothing racist about the song except for its association with the movie. And even that association has been mostly lost since the movie has been locked away for so long.
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There actually are some racist connections, in this case to minstrelsy - the “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” of the title originated in a minstrel song. The YMRT podcast mentioned above goes into some detail, as I recall.
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It’s also related to the minstrel show character and song “Zip Coon”. So yeah, racist roots.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw#Zip_Coon
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Another racist element lifted from the movie is that when entering the queue for the ride visitors read a series of signs cribbing from one of the most notorious lines of dialogue:
Now, this here tale didn’t happen just yesterday, nor the day before. 'Twas a long time ago. And in them days, everything was mighty satisfactual. The critters, they was closer to the folks, and the folks, they was closer to the critters, and if you’ll excuse me for saying so, 'twas better all around.
This line was delivered by a character who was a former slave, so his suggestion that things were “better all around” in the old days was… problematic to say the least.
At least they got rid of the infamous tar baby and replaced it with a honey trap. (Though it’s not really clear to me why a rabbit would get stuck in honey?)
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Yeah, I definitely had some kind of Disney singalong VHS in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s that included that song plopped in out of context, along with the accompanying footage from the original. (I assume. It may have been recut a bit. Never seen it in its actual source context.)
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I only realized fairly recently that most of what I took as a child to be “American folk songs” in popular culture are really horribly racist minstrel show songs, like “Turkey in the Straw” (a re-worded version of “Ol’ Zip Coon”), “Old Dan Tucker”, and “Jimmy Crack Corn”.
Don’t even get me started on Stephen Foster…
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At some point, white Americans are just going to have to come to terms with the fact that a good deal of our popular culture has some deeply racist roots… But often, even when you come with the receipts, white people still want to deny this shit. It’s like, here is this historical chain that relates directly to something racist, and it’s still like… “nah, can’t be… I liked it as a kid.” 
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Thanks for posting this link: I came to here to relate that I listened to the whole 6-episode series on Song of the South on You Must Remember This podcast last year while finishing a big carpentry project and recommend it to other happy mutants.
Then I listened to a bit of the long series on Hollywood blocklisting of communists and those accused of leftism, also learned a lot (unfortunately the podcast used a more common but refuted term).
The series on Charles Manson’s Hollywood is also a great listen.
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Is a song inherently racist if it was invented by black people? The minstrel shows in some cases weren’t inventing the music, they were appropriating songs that were already popular. I’m not sure I want to tell people that it’s not ok to like a song because it was invented by slaves or their descendants.
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I always knew those imagineers were clever!
(Just recently finished “The Imagineer Story” worth a binge)
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It’s my understanding that many minstrel show songs were written and performed by white northerners who had little actual contact with the South. Take Stephen Foster, who only visited the South once during his brief career.
Not all of these songs may not be inherently racist, especially if they’re based on the music of enslaved Africans, but I was surprised to learn that their popularity had racist roots especially after being appropriated by white blackface performers. Look at the lyrics to “Old Zip Coon” in particular.
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Can we get America Sings back while they’re at it? I know it would require stealing the G-2 droids back from the Star Tours queue.
You do realize that the minstrel shows were profiting off Black misery, right?
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Yeah, but they’re definitely going to censor Darryl Hannah-Bot’s ass…
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Oh man… You’re going to hate ice cream trucks…
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While several people claimed credit for writing them, none were Black. As you note, simply looking at the lyrics draws an unmistakable line between that racist song and the song in the movie (written by two white men). We can provide all the facts we want to show this song is grounded in racism, but…
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