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