This is a super interesting post and an important topic. I don’t know enough about it, with the background I have, so I don’t have all that much to add. But I do think it’s an important point too that this is a British situation, and I’d love to hear inputs from someone British. That’s one of my biggest issues with Tumblr (outside of the lynch mob mentality), that American culture is sort of seen as the default and that Europe and European culture is uniform and an extension of that, which is not the case at all. So I’m certain that being black or belonging to any minority in US vs UK has as many differences as everything else.

That said, I’m certain your points about being marginalised and how that may affect your reaction to things and choice of actions are very much valid. So I think the bottom line for me is that I don’t think JKR intended to write Hermione as black or racially open to interpretation. (She’s basically said that she’s written a lot of herself into Hermione, has she not? I might remember wrongly.) But maybe she saw somewhere along the line that people interpreted her differently and decided to never specify? And I also don’t really see her comment as her retroactively superimposing blackness on Hermione, but rather her saying that she’s all for this interpretation and supports the casting, and also trying to shut down the racist criticism of it? I’m very happy to see the casting, personally (even though I’m torn about the play, since I find it rather exclusionary as not many people will be able to see it), and I think it’s good that they chose this direction.