This reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my BF's sisters who was all "up in arms" about a black ariel.

I didn't care who they cast for Ariel, they just needed to do it right by not CGI the tail & have the actress actually learn to swim as a mermaid to encourage learning swimming among children (since a huge portion of the audience who will see the little mermaid are children)

I did however care who they cast for Prince Eric, not skin colour but he had to be tall, dark & handsome because he was my crush growing up- I wanted Suraj Sharma as Eric, I knew it wasn't going to happen but I still hoped lol.

In the book though, it describes the "Prince" as being tan & the mermaid's skin the colour of seafoam which doesn't necessarily mean white. I've seen depictions where she is green or blue, even a pale grey-- but it's a mermaid- a fictional creature As long as the actress took mermaid swimming lessons, I'd have no complaints (because in pirates of the Caribbean I was really disappointed that they made mermaids into killer sirens & I wanted the kind mermaids that you see in the movie Hook (with the Late, great Robin Williams) (Also, Sirens originally could fly- one of the earliest mentioning is in the Odyssey. Odysseus put beeswax in his ears to ignore their song of temptation & tied his crew down & locked them below as the sirens flew around the ship)

In the book of The Little Mermaid, it also describes their kingdom as being extremely colourful, filled with coral & rainbow flowers & even fruit trees & the waters were relatively warm- the sisters each are sent out for their 16th birthday to basically find adventure & discover themselves, each one that returned came back with a mesmerizing story about the Arctic, the Nile & so on which made "the little mermaid" want more.

But back to my point- my Bf's sister just complained on about how "Ariel was a red head, she is white! why do they need to go all politically correct & change her skin tone!"

And I showed her a picture of a black woman with red braids from Pinterest on my phone. In the picture, the woman had gold dust on her lips & shimmer on her cheeks- it made her look ethereal & to me a perfect mermaid. It's not about politics, it's about representation & the fact that when it boils down to it, The Mermaids skin tone doesn't matter.

The sister rolled her eyes & kept to her self.