It's political correctness gone mad, I tell you! Where will it finally end before these maniacs are satisfied?! Next thing you know, Harry's gonna be Jewish, Ron transgender, and Shacklebolt will have imposed Sharia law on Britain!

Country's absolutely gone to the dogs, is what it is.

 

Easy there Vernon.

 

In related news, the actor playing Harry doesn't have green eyes (or black hair) and the actor playing Ron doesn't have red hair.

The end is nigh.

 

And just like that, "Harry Potter and the Forgotten Brother" become the most aptly titled story in all of fandom.

 

Those things could be corrected with hair dye and contact lenses though.

 

I'm sure they'll do the same with Hermione and some whiteface.

 

The people decrying her for not being British is what's really hilarious, because she actually is. She was in Casualty just the other week ffs.

 

Generally I dont approve of cross gender and racial casting on television and film, because there is usually some creepy politics behind it.

The theater is very different though and has always had its own traditions on this kind of thing. Raceblind casting has been a boom for english theater.

 

Hahaha! I knew it!

As for black Hermione? Zero fucks given here. Theatre has its own set of politics.

 

Inb4 retroactive shitstorm fueled by buzzfeedreddit over how Draco lovin fangirls are now NOT OK because of the whole new layers of meaning regarding "mudblood". Trololol.

 

I'm perfectly fine with a colourblind theatre the best actors should definitely get the role assuming they can act and speak in the appropriate accent. If this was a move to seem PC or with the times I'm going to be severely disappointed.

In the end, it doesn't really matter.

 

I'm perfectly okay with them casting whoever they decide to cast, but I have a slight issue (don't know what to call it) at JK Rowling's tweet in response to the roll call. When I read the tweet where she listed the canonical characteristics of Hermione, it felt to me like she is trying to say it was all part of her plan that she never specified Hermione being white, and left the ambiguity there on purpose. If I'm remembering correctly, she made it a point to explicitly mention if other people were a minority (ex: Kingsley).

 

When you live halfway across the world from Britain....
#Australia

 

Was she actually confirming the skin colour, though? Or was she saying based on the characteristics provided in the book that the colour of Hermione's skin could be interpreted as sky blue, for all it matters.

 

I think she was leaving the skin color up to the readers. However according to book one Hermione is described as:

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth."

I have never met a black girl with brown hair in fact I always thought black hair was the norm for those of black decent. Of course now whenever I think Hermione I think of Emma Watson.

I myself tend to imagine characters as being white because I am white. Unless they are described specifically as being from a different race.

 

Creeping into the dangerous territory of going off-topic, but...

People who are classed as or identity as "black" are far more diverse in appearance than many take for granted. Hair and eye colour is usually a shade of black/brown excepting the especially rare gingers (my hair's a very dark brown, currently dyed black), but skin tone is a wholly different ballpark: I won't quote the scale as it's extremely un-PC, but it's a wide spectrum. My mum has freckles, but also has a medium-brown skin tone. My ears used to turn red in the cold. So it's all possible.

In any case, I'm with JKR. Readers can imagine Hermione as they wish. As long as the Muggle question of race isn't shoehorned into the narrative, her ethnic background shouldn't matter. Unlike her blood status, it's wholly irrelevant.

 

Always relevant.

 

Meh. I don't like it because it gives obnoxious social justice morons another reason to be obnoxious and moronic.

For one, everyone with their head on straight knows canon Hermione isn't black and was never meant to be... unless you think JKR never bothered mentioning one of her three main characters -her admitted primary self insert- was black, when she did it for other characters. It was a fluke she drew her character as white.

More irritating than the smug "I told you so" crap that will no doubt start showing up, from people thinking this is somehow canon (plenty of smugness showing up, here, already, though perhaps of a different flavor - "tears" and "salt" comments abound), we'll have dipshits going on about the racial subtext of the play, or worse of the books, when there ISN'T ANY! There's no fucking racial subtext to go looking for and distracting from the REAL textual racial and social issues that REALLY ARE in Harry Potter.

Just from reading the fan fiction you can tell that there are thousands of people who consider themselves HP fans (why else would you write sincere -if shitty- attempts at fan fic) but do not even remotely get the barely deeper meaning of Harry Potter.

So many people having Hermione find out she's a pureblood and fall for Draco because her stance on racists and the racism they engage in vanishes the minute she's not a mudblood anymore.

So many people writing stories where being a pureblood means you have super special powers that the mud people don't have.

Those people already don't get Harry Potter, when the currents of racism and classism are so thinly veneered in a 'Woohoo, isn't magic crazy!?' exterior that you can't even say it's beneath the surface! It's served up to us on one of Hogwarts' golden platters and they still don't get it.

And now we'll probably have idiots trying to analyze what "deeper meanings" and "signs of racial tension" in the books are revealed to us now that Hermione's supposed "canon ethnicity" has been "confirmed," when they were too dim to get what was really going on in the first place.

Hey, this horse shit cuts both ways, though; maybe we'll have some of those chuckle-heads theorizing that since Lavender was black (but only because she was set dressing in the pre-HBP movies) and Hermione is black (they'd like to think), that Ron wasn't interested in her for her personality, but simply because he is fetishizing the African body. I mean, he clearly found almost everything she did and said irritating and distasteful, and barely gave a thought for muggles, so what other answer is there? The ginger was shamelessly othering her by eroticising her African appearance. Arglbarglsklgewhg.... :fire

Fuck idiots.
Fuck 'em right in their empty, smug, pusillanimous, little, skulls. :facepalm

 

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, I'm going to assume an unspecified wizard in Europe is white. Just like I would assume China's wizarding school is primarily populated by Han Chinese, and the Bolivar School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is Latins with varying amounts of indigenous Indians.

That's not racist, it's having a basic inkling of geography.

Whatever, play is a play. But I'm with Warlocke: fuck the smug we all know is coming.

 

Or...

There might also be fans out there who do get the point of the series, but for whatever reason happen to picture Hermione as non-white (while also taking care not to inject Muggle politics into the setting).

I don't understand why this rankles you so much.