Totally agree about US-centrism on tumblr - both that it's a thing and that it's not a good thing. There's a lot of flattening/ignoring nuance that goes on, and it's not good. I'd be interested in input from British people as well, and I'd bet have a more nuanced understanding of the whole situation than we can as people from other countries.
I think I'm with you on the bottom line, and that you're right that JKR has said she wrote a lot of herself into Hermione. But I do think she's doing more than just saying that she's open to interpretation. Grace said it better than I did, in comments above, but I think the way JKR wrote her tweet makes it sound like she intentionally left it open all along, like she sat down to write the books and thought "oh, I'll leave this open to ambiguity so that people can read Hermione however they want." I don't think that was the case, because there are so many signs that Hermione was meant to be white. So it does feel like retroactively trying to take credit for it, or to say that Hermione...not necessarily that she was black, but that she could have been read that way. But if she intended that all along, I think she needed to be meeting a higher bar in terms of really exploring and accounting for what that would mean for the character. I agree that she was trying to shut down the racist criticism, yes, and that that's very important. But I wish she'd taken a different tactic, and that instead of suggesting she created that ambiguity intentionally, she'd talked about the casting choice as a way to improve diversity in the HP universe - that she'd implicitly taken responsibility for the lack of representation in the texts and shown an interest in fixing it, instead of trying to make like it had been there all along.
I'm not sure I'm still making sense, so I'm sorry if this is a crazy ramble!! I think we agree on a lot of it. And I definitely share your hesitation re: the play in general. I'm very glad they cast Noma Dumezweni, but the whole play as a thing definitely feels exclusionary, which, that just sucks.
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I think I'm with you on the bottom line, and that you're right that JKR has said she wrote a lot of herself into Hermione. But I do think she's doing more than just saying that she's open to interpretation. Grace said it better than I did, in comments above, but I think the way JKR wrote her tweet makes it sound like she intentionally left it open all along, like she sat down to write the books and thought "oh, I'll leave this open to ambiguity so that people can read Hermione however they want." I don't think that was the case, because there are so many signs that Hermione was meant to be white. So it does feel like retroactively trying to take credit for it, or to say that Hermione...not necessarily that she was black, but that she could have been read that way. But if she intended that all along, I think she needed to be meeting a higher bar in terms of really exploring and accounting for what that would mean for the character. I agree that she was trying to shut down the racist criticism, yes, and that that's very important. But I wish she'd taken a different tactic, and that instead of suggesting she created that ambiguity intentionally, she'd talked about the casting choice as a way to improve diversity in the HP universe - that she'd implicitly taken responsibility for the lack of representation in the texts and shown an interest in fixing it, instead of trying to make like it had been there all along.
I'm not sure I'm still making sense, so I'm sorry if this is a crazy ramble!! I think we agree on a lot of it. And I definitely share your hesitation re: the play in general. I'm very glad they cast Noma Dumezweni, but the whole play as a thing definitely feels exclusionary, which, that just sucks.