In Defense of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah

The recent upsets of racial tension in the United States and demands for dismantling of "systemic racism" has led yet again to laser-focused attacks on anything historical that may have racist underpinnings. This has eventually led to the Disney company and it's theme park attraction Splash Mountain. First opened in the 1990s, Splash Mountain is a log flume ride most known for its iconic steep drop at the end into water. But the interior of the ride is modeled on animated characters from Disney's Song of the South, the 1946 feature film that already has a spotty history and presence for the company. None of the racial overtones ascribed to the film are particularly present in modern usages of the animated characters divorced from the context of the film. Yet the very existence of Song of the South tie-ins and the use of its theme song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" have led to cries that the ride be rebranded as a Princess and the Frog ride. And it seems Disney has caved to the pressure. This essay is not a defense of Splash Mountain or even of the Song of the South film, both subjects for another time, but of the theme song itself. I think wiping it from memory or writing it off as historically racist is wrong.

But what if it is truly historically racist?
Before I delve into my main counter arguments, let's hypothetically agree that the song has racism at its root. Does that then mean we must eliminate it from existence? I don't think that argument is strong enough. The vast majority of Disney-goers and young people today with any familiarity with this 75-year-old song do not have associations with older American folk musicology. To them, the words "zip-a-dee-doo-dah" hold no more racial overtone than "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo" or any other nonsensical Disney lyric. And divorced of that phrase, the song is just a jaunty tune about what a beautiful day it is apart from maybe the racially-tinged neologism "satisfactual". But since modern slang is rife with incorrect grammatical phraseology (including the trendy use of "being woke"), I suspect that too remains innocuous for most.

What then is the merit in eliminating the song? If its present day incarnation doesn't carry racist associations for people, is it doing any harm or perpetuating stereotypes? If we must remove "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", surely the next step is wiping out any children's book or film or show that uses "eenie meenie minie mo", since that rhyme also originates in a racist place. But children today don't know it that way, and divorced from its context it seems fine. For that matter, we still teach children to sing "Yankee Doodle", a song written to mock Americans, but which now survives mainly as a reclaimed nonsense song. What of the 1990s Disney cult classic Hocus Pocus? Sure, that seems good clean Halloween fun until you learn that the phrase "hocus pocus" is thought to originate as a mockery of the Latin Mass. Should American Catholics be offended that pagan magic, however fanciful, is associated with mockery of the body of Christ? That's blasphemous, anti-religious bigotry. But no one calls for Disney to rename its movie to Abra Cadabra because the words "hocus pocus" may historically be anti-Christian and offensive. All that context is buried in the sands of time and to modern audiences it's mere nonsense words no different from Merlin's "higgitus figgitus" or Harry Potter's "wingardium leviosa".

If one has to dredge up research in order to even associate it with racism, maybe it's not a big deal. Contemporary popular culture has divorced it of its meaning, just as Marvel's Sinister Six doesn't imply that left-handed people are evil. So even if we were to agree that the song has undeniable racist origin, I think there's a fair argument that it lacks much of that association, particularly for today's children who have never seen Song of the South since it has been out of circulation for over 30 years and don't have those associations.

The "racist" history of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" -- the argument
The song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", written to be sung by the black character Uncle Remus in the movie, opens and revolves around the phrase "zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay". And apart from it being sung by a black character, this seems to be the sole basis for the assertion it has racist overtones, as it is suggested that the phrase has its roots in an old racist variant of "Turkey in the Straw" known as "Zip Coon" or "Old Zip Coon". The song predates the Civil War, dating to the 1830s or 1840s. Very much associated with minstrel shows and that sort of racial stereotyping, the verses are written in a mock-Negro patois, and the chorus is simply the repeated refrain "Zip a duden duden Zip a duden day".

I will certainly not defend "Zip Coon" as a character conception or as a song, nor its verses. But the entire case against "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" seems to be in the belief that the phrase "zip a dee doo dah" was influenced by "zip a duden day", and therefore is racist by association. I was curious if there was much scholarship to back this up, such as songwriters mentioning influence. I did only cursory research here, but checked out the Wikipedia articles associated with both songs.  They assert influence and provide a citation. The citation leads to a 1997 book by Ken Emerson titled Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture.

Emerson's assertion is also little more than a sentence, reading "In addition to its enduring incarnation as 'Turkey in the Straw,' 'Zip Coon,' or at least its nonsensical chorus -- 'O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day' -- also survives in 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,' from the soundtrack for Song of the South, Walt Disney's animated version of Joel Chandler Harris's 'Uncle Remus' tales." And that's it. But I am hesitant to agree with Emerson's conclusions, as in the very next sentence he declares that Mickey Mouse himself is a racist caricature, being "a cartoon of a cartoon, his black skin, exaggerated facial features, white gloves and big feet an updated Ethiopian delineation." Now, this is easily refutable and gross oversimplification.

Mickey Mouse's design is essentially a rework of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whose design is almost identical. And likewise that design and others is most probably heavily influenced by Felix the Cat. The fact that all of these characters have black fur is not evidence of racially-influenced design. All animated cartoons were in black and white in the 1910s and '20s, and designs relied heavily on easy contrast designs of black ink on white. Mickey's white gloves don't even appear in his earliest shorts; they were added later to provide more contrast and make his hands more visible. Exaggerated facial features of course are for the cartooniness of conveying emotion and are not limited to "racial" character designs. Again, see Felix the Cat or Betty Boop. Not to mention the strongest argument that Mickey's design as is is not "blackface": the character himself sometimes does blackface (for example, portraying Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin in "Mickey's Mellerdrammer"). While historically there were African American stage performers who did perform in blackface, suggesting that Mickey would essentially be blackface on top of blackface is a tad absurd.

Both of Emerson's assertions are accompanied with citation notes, however I do not have access from the Wikipedia link to those citations, so I don't know what he's citing. For all I know, this is just a chain of assertions assuming connections because they seem obvious. I cannot know without further research into his sources. But this also showcases the limitations posed by linking a citation to something that is itself referencing another work, possibly incorrectly. Regardless of the veracity of Emerson's claim, the entire argument rests on the supposed link between "Zip a duden duden" and "Zip a dee doo dah." Is that case strong enough to warrant elimination of the song for historic racism?

The "Zip Coon" argument also glosses over the more obvious callback, the phrase "doo dah", which we can trace back at least as far as the refrain of Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races". While also originating as a minstrel song, "Camptown Races" has quickly fallen into the Great American Songbook divorced from any racial overtones and is frequently sung in programming for all ages, including for children. The basic simple tune is often a framework for any manner of fun lyrics with a "doo dah" refrain, as it's a tune that most everyone in America knows. It would not be out of the ordinary for someone to hum, "Gonna wash my car today, doo dah, doo dah..." Doubtless few who sing a "doo dah" refrain today are doing so with racist intent or overtone. The "doo dah" phrase is so endemic that it lived on in such things as the 1960s musical group The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Nonsense phrases in historical context
Even assuming for the moment that the phrase does owe its origin to the "Zip Coon" song, one could make the case that the songwriter is being period accurate to the style of popular song. Song of the South is set during the Reconstruction Era of the late 19th Century, by which time popular folk tunes like "zip a duden duden" would be standard. So one could make the argument that using a similar phrase isn't necessarily racist in itself but simply an act of historically literate songwriting. But personally, I have a hard time even seeing the "zip a duden duden" chorus as racist in itself. Absolutely the "Zip Coon" song in its entirety has obvious racist undertones. But I have trouble seeing that refrain as particularly racist, especially since it doesn't seem to follow the typical "coon song" racial patois. And the clincher for me is that nonsense word choruses and refrains are a staple of folk music of this period.

For example, what the heck does it mean to sing "polly wolly doodle all the day"? "Polly Wolly Doodle" doesn't seem to carry any particular overtones. When we "deck the halls with boughs of holly," why do we also "fa la la la la"? And many Disney songs themselves from the 1930s and '40s before Song of the South contain nonsense lyrical refrains. We certainly don't hold any malicious intent behind "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Tra la la la la," or, "heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go," or "Hi-diddle-dee-dee, an actor's life for me". One could certainly see "Zip a dee doo dah" as following a tradition of nonsense syllables.

From nursery rhymes to folk music we find nonsense refrains, be they onomatopoeic (as in "Hey diddle diddle" presumably evoking the sawing of the cat's fiddle) or mere folderol. Indeed, that word folderol itself derives from such a nonsense refrain! Today, the dictionary defines folderol as "trivial or nonsensical fuss". But did you know "fol de rol" or "fal de ral" can be found in old Welsh folk music? Take for example the song "Dacw 'Nghariad", which follows each verse phrase with (and I'm anglicizing the spelling here), "Too rum di ro rum di raddle iddle al." The chorus is just a repeated "fal de raddle diddle al."

So we can see that there is a long history of musical nonsense syllables rounding out popular music for centuries, and in songs that do not involve black slavery at all. This tradition continued in popular music as well past the 1940s, with phrases like "sha na na", or "sh-boom" or Winnie-the-Pooh's "tiddly poms" (in the book) or "hum dum dee dum" (in the Disney cartoons). An entire genre of music came to be called "doo wop", and it would be foolish to assume that was a racist moniker attributed because many artists were black.

Conclusion
It therefore seems to me that a lot of fuss made about "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is much ado about nothing. While there are certain racist associations with some similar phraseology, I don't believe the song's intent is to be racist, nor do I believe the average public holds such associations with the song itself, apart from it being tied to a film they have heard is racist. I contend that the presence of a similar silly refrain in a racist song is not proof that all similar nonsense lyrics are racist, as such refrains are a mainstay of popular music. And even if it were, time has long eroded away those associations to the point where kids today don't know anything about it. Indeed, the average American has never heard "Zip Coon" and would never think to associate the two.

"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is not only one of the most popular and enduring Disney songs, it won an Academy Award. We've already all but disavowed the existence of Song of the South as a film. James Baskett, the actor who played Uncle Remus and sang the song, was given a special Oscar for his portrayal. I think it does a great disservice to a great black actor and to this song to continue to sweep it under the rug. Let's not eliminate a delightful musical piece because someone things a four-syllable nonsense adjective is racist. It's a perfectly cromulent word.