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I recently watched The Princess and the Frog for the first time in over a decade, and my first time since viewing Song of the South. I do not understand why PATF is considered less socially insensitive than SOTS. So far as I can tell, both are guilty of the same sin: romanticizing the past in a way that glosses over the harsh reality of race relations. Both are set in the south and have a mixed race cast; PATF is set during Jim Crow and SOTS is set during Reconstruction. Both indirectly acknowledge race by conflating it with class, never mentioning race once but casting everyone in the lower caste as black.
The best explanation I can think of is that Reconstruction is considered a more salient part of American history than Jim Crow, but that's weird, considering that there are people alive who lived under Jim Crow but not people who lived in the 1800's.
If this is a genuine question, then the answer is simple: "The Princess and the Frog" is a Disney Princess movie with a black princess. It's what they tried to re-do with the live action version of "The Little Mermaid", making Ariel black, but failing there because Tiana is at least an original character. As for "everyone in the lower caste as black", what you mean is "nearly everyone is black". Prince Naveen is light-skinned, but he's not a white Prince Charming. You have two good-guy white characters, Charlotte and her father, and I think (not having watched the movie) a couple of bad-guy white characters. Everyone else is black, and it's an adaptation of a novel which itself is a variation on the original fairy tale.
Reading up on it on Wikipedia, it came in for criticism about the setting in the Jim Crow era, voodoo, etc., but in the main it's more acceptable because it's a traditional Disney animated movie with a Disney princess, so Tiana is on the same level as Cinderella and Snow White, and being an original character she's not "let's do the same movie but make the white character race-swapped" as with "The Little Mermaid".
Aside from Mama Odie, who lives in the bayou, every black character we see works in the diner with Tiana or lives in her neighborhood.
I see your point about the merchandising implications, though. Thank you.
Yeah, but that's the point. Prince Naveen is an arrogant, selfish playboy. It's not until he meets the Honest Salt of the Earth Working Folks that he begins to change and grow. It's American "we don't got no class hierarchy here, Jack is as good as his master, from the log cabin to the White House, work hard and you can achieve your dreams" at play. As well, of course, as the racial angle - the honest salt of the earth working class black folks are being kept down by racism and a history of slavery. Charlotte's dad is this close to being a plantation owner - he is a sugar mill owner, that's where the fortune comes from, and the history of sugar cultivation is founded on slavery (see the early 19th century abolitionist sugar bowl).
When Naveen marries Tiana, she doesn't go off to his indeterminate home land to be a princess, he comes back to New Orleans with her to open the restaurant of her (and her father's) dreams. The aristocracy of labour, yo.
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