Prince Naveen and His Race, Or, Lack Thereof

After spending the last 30 minutes browsing the interwebs and exploring the question of Prince Naveen's racial ambiguity, I have come to the conclusion that the world will never know what race Naveen is supposed to represent. The more important question to consider then, is if this was an ingenious decision on Disney's part or rather a self-incriminating one. Though I failed to find any solid evidence from the Walt Disney Company itself or any extremely compelling arguments for one race over the other, I did happen upon a large number of various articles, blog posts, and journals criticizing one facet or another of Naveen's race. Like Ajay Gehlawat asserts in "The Strange Case of The Princess and the Frog: Passing and the Elision of Race", Naveen encompasses physical and linguistic traits that associate him with both India and France, two cultures that are indisputably different. 

Why did Disney feel the need to do this? Naveen's character is an artistic decision that I may never get over because I am just so perplexed as to why Disney consciously crafted him to be the way that he is. Though I have little evidence, which I believe was a purposeful maneuver by Disney to keep Naveen's racial identity as ambiguous as possible, I too will add my voice to the masses and speculate as to why Naveen essentially possesses "no race". No matter how much I thought about it, it just did not make logical sense to me that Disney would purposefully conceive such an obscure prince-- but then I realized that this obscurity was the point.

By refusing to categorize Naveen, Disney is able to get closer to achieving the paradoxically race-representing and race-blind film that it so desires. By confusing the audience enough over the topic of race through Naveen, Disney is able to mold The Princess and the Frog to address both those who believe that race is represented positively and those who believe that race is represented negatively in the film. It is a phenomenon that, at least for me, warrants enough bewilderment that, after intensively trying to discover an answer and failing, I have no choice but to let it be. It would be interesting to view Disney's true motive behind creating this film. My guess is that they felt pressured to encompass diversity in their films, and didn't know how to go about it in a "politically correct" manner that would appeal to their target audience. Thus, Naveen was born out of their desire to at once introduce "Otherness" but also adhere to the traditional European princes that are known to sell to the public. 

What do you think about the fact that Naveen strikingly resembles, to put it in Gehlawat's terms, an "extremely brown" Eric from The Little Mermaid? I, for one, am utterly mystified.