Lawsuit: Disneyland Employee Dressed as White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland Refused to Hug Black Child


If you want to go through a roll call of possibly crypto-racist characters in the Disney canon, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland would rank pretty low, even though he IS white and some of the morons over at Stormfront have long used him as a user-profile pic. Hell, all I remember from the cartoon is that the guy was chubby and he kept running because he was late to something. Seemed like a nebbish to me.

But a San Diego family that's African-American is alleging in a lawsuit that last summer, a Disneyland cast member dressed as the White Rabbit refused to hug their son while freely hugging white and Asian children.

And to make the story even better? The family's surname is Black.
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Here is the original report by KGTV-TV Channel 10 in San Diego. What's most damning in this story is that Disneyland brass not only apologized for the incident, but offered to give the family $500 in park passes–but only if they signed off on a confidentiality agreement. Hmm…


KTLA-TV Channel 5 up here also had pictures of non-whte children hugging the White Rabbit, but it was unclear if the Blacks took those photos at the time.

Disneyland refused comment as they have yet to see the lawsuit, but it'll be interesting to see how far it'll go. The company's attention to customer satisfaction is legendary, but so are their lawyers…should be fun!

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