J K ROWLING NEVER SAID HERMOINE GRANGER WAS WHITE AND SHE KINDA WASN'T

WITHOUT PEOPLE OF COLOR A LOT OF OUR STORIES DON'T MAKE SENSE

EVEN J.K. ROWLING'S "HARRY POTTER" DOESN'T WORK

"Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense.

What I mean by that is: if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t sense. If it wasn’t for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense. If it wasn’t for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn’t make sense.

Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things—erased, and yet without us—we are essential."

Junot Diaz
"The Brief Wonderous Life Of Oscar Wao"

This is true for the Harry Potter Series as well.

To be specific, the Hermoine Granger character doesn't make sense without her having a history very much like that of black and brown people.

Hermoine's character is based on her being thought of as, not just an outsider, but a biological outsider. Her story is the story of white supremacy, of eugenics, or of dominant culture racism.  Her story is our story. Hermoine cast as a black girl would have made Hermoine's outcast character make a lot more sense on screen.

J.K. Rowling wrote her perfectly. Her physical description lends itself well to a black or brown girl with huge, coily, natural hair. And I so wish she'd been cast as black or brown in the movie because the most important thing about Hermoine's character was her character, intelligence, and friendship.

As it was, it was good to see boys and girls respect one another as equals on screen.  It would have been awesome to see ethnicity and/or race added to that to strengthen black and brown children with positive images and educate white children against the ambient white supremacy their parents and culture are unwittingly bathing them in daily.

Black Hermoine would have been good for everybody all the way around.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alannabennett/what-a-racebent-hermione-granger-really-represen-d2yp?utm_term=.amYwBpMv7#.xub9DROKM 

THE DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY Chimamanda Adichie

"Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories.
Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her
authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single
story about another person or country, we risk a critical
misunderstanding."

Learn while being entertained. 

A born story teller, this Woman.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of "Americanah," and guest speaker/rapper(?) on a Beyonce song.

She explains the danger that all of us of face by only knowing the details of our own tribe, whether the commonality of our tribe is based on race, class, or nationality, how only knowing our own tribe makes everybody else in every other tribe seem flat, lesser, and easier to stereotype.

It's all so simple when you let her explain it.

THE SOURCE OF HER POWER

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends 

till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds

came from the same source as her power

~Adrienne Rich

Many,

maybe half of all women

deny their wounds,

deny that their wounds

came from 

the same source as

their power. 

Do they die feeling successful 
or feeling that they've failed?

When a woman dies denying wounds,
feeling successful or feeling a failure, 

what does that mean for daughters?

~DebLynn

ENTERTAINMENT THAT GROWS STRONG GIRLS: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Gina Prince-Bythewood

It’s interesting that people ask me a lot if I’m discriminated against as a black female director and I don’t think I am, because I’m offered a ton of stuff. I just don’t take it. What’s discriminated against are my choices: to focus on women. Those films are not greenlit as often as a film that focuses on a guy...it is a harder fight....




I would consider myself a feminist.

I wouldn’t say I make feminist movies, but my mindset influences what I write and what I direct. It’s interesting that there are so many different definitions of feminism, but for me, being in this male-dominated career, it’s bizarre to me there aren’t more females. Talent has no gender. It makes no sense...

I think part of my whole thing comes from sports as well—I grew up an athlete, it’s such a part of who I am. Being in sports, I just grew up knowing that aggression is good. The way I walk on set or into a meeting is like I’m walking out on the court.

FROM THE HAIR PIN, READ MORE:
http://thehairpin.com/2014/11/love-gina-prince-bythewood

I would agree with her assessment of herself. Or maybe should I say her assessment of her own movies, since I don't know her?

Gina Prince-Bythewood doesn't make feminist movies but her mindset affects the characters she writes or molds through directing. I can say the same thing about Chimamanda's Ngozi Adichie's books, "Americanah" in particular and  J.K. Rowling's* "Harry Potter" series as well

When feminist women create female characters I can see the difference in the strengths, weakness, vulnerabilities, failures, and triumphs in the female characters approach things - even the non-feminist female characters are more three dimensional, even in a love story. 

In Love And Basketball, Beyond The Lights, Frida, The Color Purple, and Harry Potter you can see feminist created female characters in films and books take responsibility for taking up the space they are supposed to take up, be a whole completely feminine person who is capable of being interdependent with men or independent of men. Even if the female character is just plain screwing up, they are wholly adult. And that means they are always capable of making a better next choice.

What more can you ask for in a fictional character that your girl child might want to pretend to be for a while?  


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My definition of feminist: Women who get stuff done and enrich others.

Your Silence Won't Save You - Audre Lorde

I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me...Your silences will not protect you...

I began to ask each time: "

What's the worst 
that could happen to me 
if I tell this truth?"

Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night.

Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is MORE frightening than speaking your truth. And that is NOT speaking.”

~ Audre Lorde