dicta_contrion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dicta_contrion) wrote2015-12-21 09:27 pm
dicta_contrion) wrote2015-12-21 09:27 pm
Entry tags:
Cursed Child Casting + JKR's reaction + Retconning Race? = Thoughts
SO DAMN EXCITED about Noma Dumezweni as Hermione. Unequivocally really, really excited. I love the racebending headcanons and fan art on tumblr and love how widespread they've become. I love and very much appreciate that the writers and producers of The Cursed Child made this chocie, and I'm very excited for Hermione as a black woman to become an official part of the wider HP verse.
I'm also glad that JK Rowling came out in support of it. I haven't gone fishing for it (value my blood pressure, thankyouverymuch) but am given to understand that there was a substantial backlash to the idea that Hermione could be black, to which JKR said:
Which strikes me as important on a number of levels. That JKR is willing to wade into this and stand behind the choice and the actress, that she's explicitly refuting racist claims that Hermione can't be black for any number of bullshit reasons, and that she's affirming the fans who think of Hermione as black.
And I love these headcanons for a reason! They're smart and they're important and I see absolutely no reason why Hermione can't be black, and think some things about the series get way cooler if she is black.
But something about JKR's response is sitting uneasily with me.
Partly it feels like shades of Dumbledore again. "Oh, did I not mention? My books were full of representation, how did you not notice that?"
Partly it bothers me for the same reasons that the post-canon Dumbledore-is-gay proclamation bothers me: because if you're going to claim to have written representative characters, and you're going to claim brownie points for representation, you need to do the work of representation.
In the same general way that Dumbledore's sexuality changes the story, I can't imagine* that Hermione's race wouldn't change the story. There are some ways - like those mentioned in the headcanon above - that would give the story more depth and significance. But even if JKR is open to Hermione being black, I don't think she intended that originally** and there are parts of the book that read differently to me, not necessarily in a good way, if she's actually intended it all along. Things like
I'm not sure where all that leaves me. Still feeling really very excited that Noma Dumezweni will be playing Hermione Granger. Glad that people are being asked to question the assumption that the default is white. Happy that the qualities I think of as being most associated with Hermione - incredible intelligence, loyalty, conviction, skill, and moral integrity (and, for/from the audience, relatability and lovability) - are being assigned to a black character. That a black actress was picked to play a character who has all those qualities, and in a role that will almost undoubtedly be commercially successful. This is a powerful, important thing, and exactly as it should be.
But also, not believing that JKR really meant to leave Hermione's race open to interpretation. Feeling like if JKR did mean to make Hermione's race open to interpretation, she didn't really do the work of thinking through how race would have affected Hermione in important ways - like the source of her ideological convictions, her motivations for fighting, and her conception of her own desirability. And feeling like this kind of post-hoc representation doesn't work. That you can't retcon race, or sexuality, or any other number of identities, because those aren't boxes you check, they're real identities that affect the way we see and move through the world.
Maybe my tl;dr here is that while Hermione should be black, and definitely should be able to be black, Hermione wasn't meant to be black, and retroactively superimposing blackness on her character isn't as simple as waving a magic wand. (pun totally intended) Making as though representation is as simple as changing a character's skin color after the fact undermines the complexity and centrality of having a marginalized identity, and gives white audiences another reason to embrace the idea of colorblindness instead of having to examine how racial experience change one's experience of the world. At some point it becomes an act of erasure instead of representation, by reducing race to skin color (or any other number of identities to other attributes) instead of exploring the ways that living with specific identities, in a world where those identities create or limit our opportunities, changes who we are, what we do, and why we do it. I still want Noma Dumezweni to play Hermione. I still want to have a black Hermione. I want that very much. I just hope that as the team behind The Cursed Child shape the character, they consider what that means, in all its complexity.
But I don't know that I really do final thoughts on this. I am, however, very curious to hear what other people make of the casting choice. Thoughts?
* "I" = white American, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing something about blackness or Britishness or British blackness/that that limits my ability to imagine how or why race would affect Hermione and her story.
** Among other things, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ani_mage pointed out, JKR makes a point of describing the ethnicity of her non-white characters, and it would be odd if she did this for every one of them but Hermione. And in general, JKR's descriptions follow along the lines of white human = default. So Krum is Krum but Fleur is half-Veela, Karkaroff is Karkaroff but Madame Maxime is half-giant, Neville is "the boy who kept losing his toad" and Cedric "wouldn't...have wanted to risk his good looks" but Anelina is "A tall black girl" and Cho Chang and Padma and Parvati Patil have names that strongly suggest an ethnicity. There's also the casting and re-casting of Lavendar Brown in the movies. If her whiteness was important enough that the actress had to be re-cast when she started to have a speaking role/became a love interest for Ron, I think it's safe to infer that JKR had an investment in having the movie actors reflect the characters as she'd imagined them, and that casting Emma Watson as Hermione reflects JKR's vision of Hermione as white.
*** Are Muggle-borns disadvantaged when they join the wizarding world, in the lull between the two wars? I think yes. At a minimum we know there are well-connected families who wouldn't want anything to do with them. The Malfoys and Goyles and Crabbes and etc. probably aren't sitting on money from nothing. On top of being politically influential, they probably own businesses, and between their political and economic power, I imagine that there are interesting/profitable/desirable employment opportunities and social venues that would be closed to Muggle-borns.
**** h/t tosnowgall for an interesting conversation about this a while back that started me thinking more deeply about how white privilege would affect Hermione's motivations and characterization.
***** I imagine/based on what I understand from research this would also have something to do with class. If she's black and her parents are dentists and she presents as part of a professional middle class or upper-middle class family, maybe she wouldn't be exposed, or as exposed, or exposed as a child, to racial epithets?
****** Not the same as white privilege. Originating in Marxist theory and feminist standpoint theory, epistemic privilege is the idea that members of marginalized groups are able to see the world differently, and better/more completely, than people with more social privilege. (see: Feminist Standpoint Theory)
******* I mean arrogant here in both the colloquial and academic/theoretical sense. Because this isn't long and esoteric enough already, for more on arrogant and loving perception see: Marilyn Frye, "In and Out of Harm's Way" in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory and Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception" in Hypatia Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer 1987) 3-19.
******** This whole social construct is dumb and loathsome but shit's real so
I'm also glad that JK Rowling came out in support of it. I haven't gone fishing for it (value my blood pressure, thankyouverymuch) but am given to understand that there was a substantial backlash to the idea that Hermione could be black, to which JKR said:
Which strikes me as important on a number of levels. That JKR is willing to wade into this and stand behind the choice and the actress, that she's explicitly refuting racist claims that Hermione can't be black for any number of bullshit reasons, and that she's affirming the fans who think of Hermione as black.
And I love these headcanons for a reason! They're smart and they're important and I see absolutely no reason why Hermione can't be black, and think some things about the series get way cooler if she is black.
But something about JKR's response is sitting uneasily with me.
Partly it feels like shades of Dumbledore again. "Oh, did I not mention? My books were full of representation, how did you not notice that?"
Partly it bothers me for the same reasons that the post-canon Dumbledore-is-gay proclamation bothers me: because if you're going to claim to have written representative characters, and you're going to claim brownie points for representation, you need to do the work of representation.
In the same general way that Dumbledore's sexuality changes the story, I can't imagine* that Hermione's race wouldn't change the story. There are some ways - like those mentioned in the headcanon above - that would give the story more depth and significance. But even if JKR is open to Hermione being black, I don't think she intended that originally** and there are parts of the book that read differently to me, not necessarily in a good way, if she's actually intended it all along. Things like
- What it means that Hermione is Muggle-born. Her story is different if joining the wizarding world doesn't come with a switch from being part of a privileged group (white people) to a disadvantaged group (Muggle-borns).*** If she's white, she gains one kind of power when she joines the wizarding world but loses another, and that's an interesting trade-off and something that would seem to matter rather a lot, especially in those pivotal, formative years between 11 and 17. Her race doesn't make that story better or worse, more or less compelling, but it does seem to me that it would make it different, and in ways that wohave come up.****
- Hermione's reaction to being called a Mudblood. In Chamber of Secrets Chapter 7, Draco calls Hermione a mudblood and "Harry knew at once that Malfoy had said something really bad because there was an instant uproar at his words. Flint had to dive in front of Malfoy to stop Fred and George jumping on him, Alicia shrieked, "How dare you!", and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulled out his wand, yelling, "You'll pay for that one, Malfoy!" and pointed it furiously under Flint's arm at Malfoy's face." (p 112, US Hardback) Ron accidentally hexes himself with slug-vomiting, they go to Hagrid's hut and tell Hagrid, who "looked outraged," Ron explains that "It's about the most insulting thing you could think of...Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born" and that blood status has nothing to do with ability ("Look at Neville Longbottom--he's pureblood and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right way up"), Hagrid agrees and says "they haven't invented a spell our Hermione can' do," thereby "making Hermione go a brilliant shade of magenta." Then they joke about slugs and Hagrid's pumpkins. The next we hear from Hermione, she's on to a different subject: ""An Engorgement Charm, I suppose?" said Hermione, halfway between disapproval and amuseument. "Well, you've done a good job on them."" (118) The subject of Hermione being called a Mudblood isn't raised again for a while, and we don't get more insight into her reaction. But if we want to understand what motivates Hermione Granger and who she is, doesn't it matter? Is she flushing because she's embarassed, if pleased, by Hagrid's praise (as Emma Watson plays it in the movie) or because she's enraged or very upset? Is she seeing a type of discrimination she's already familiar with and not reacting because (bleak things to type...) she's used to it?***** Is she keeping her reaction to herself and behaving as though everything's normal because it's upsetting or traumatic to learn that she's just as subject to epithets based on a socially constructed but supposedly immutable status in the wizarding world as she is in the Muggle world? Because she no longer knows if she can trust her friends to understand her? Or is she actually not having much of a reaction because she doesn't really have any context for understanding the weight of what the word means and how it's intended and what it can lead to? Again, this whole exchange isn't (imo) made better or worse if Hermione is black instead of white, and maybe this is a point that's left intentionally vague so that readers can interpret it as they see fit. (I think that's the generous to JKR interpretation?) But it does tell us something important about the character, especially in terms of....
- What motivates Hermione to fight back. Hermione gives up a lot to fight back against Voldemort. Her parents, her childhood home, her education, and her personal safety, for starters. Why? In the movies especially, a lot of the answer is "because" and/or "because friendship." I don't know about you all, and maybe I'm secretly a shitty friend (? I'm not.) but I have some friends I'd probs offer a kidney to if they needed it, and I wouldn't give all of that up for somethig that didn't really, really, really meant a lot to me personally. That could be a belief in justice or an attachment to ideals, for sure, or because of an attachment to certain people; there were Christian resistance fighters who saved Jewish lives in Nazi Germany, there were white people marching with black people in the American South, and so on. Is that primarily what's going on with Hermione? Is she catalyzed to act because she already had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and this feels wrong to her? Is it able to remain at that semi-abstract ideological level because she's so new to this type of discrimination that she doesn't understand what all is it stake? Or does she fight because this is her first experience of discrimination and she finds it repulsive in part because it's an affront to a type of privilege she's been able to take for granted? Or does she fight because she already understands all too well how things like hate speech manifest in action and thinks that she might as well risk everything if she won't have all that much to lose once the Death Eaters get going? And if so is that an understanding born of research or of personal/family experience? To what extent, and how, and from what pool of ideas or experiences, can/does Hermione understand that the Death Eaters are coming for her and that her body, her life, is on the line? In a book series that's about a terorist group making claims about blood purity and the wars that they cause in the name of that ideology, isn't it kind of important to understand how and why each of those three characters chooses to fight back? Harry and Ron's motivations are pretty clear - Harry pretty much has to, and since he's our POV character we see much more of his response to it all, and Ron is part of a resistance fighter family. But Hermione's experience of race and racism, or the lack thereof, seems like it could really change our understanding of what motivates her. That's absent from the books as they're written, and that's a pretty big omission if Hermione was intended to be read as black.
- Hermione's house-elf activism. S.P.E.W. is important to Hermione, to the point that she's willing to annoy and alienate everyone around her. Freeing the elves is so important to her that she decides that she knows what they need better than they do and starts trying to trick them into taking clothes/freeing themselves, even when she's told that they don't want that. It's so important to her that the moment she first kisses Ron is when he wants to evacuate the house elves from Hogwarts/shows that he shares her commitment. So, pretty damn central. But, especially in terms of her tactics, I read this differently based on her race. To be quite honest, this is one of those points in the series where I most strongly read her as white because, well, the whole "I know what you need better than you do and I'm determined to free you even though none of you are a part of this organization and you've explicitly said you don't want to be freed and my version of liberation would destroy your social structure and potentially have you kicked out of your homes" approach is some pretty textbook worst-of-white-feminism advocacy. If Hermione is black I'm less sure of how to read that. Reading the books with the assumption that she's white,** I see it as a kind of arrogance that Hermione needs to grow out of, a place in the text where she's lacking empathy and an ability to listen to others. I'm not sure how to read that moment if Hermione is black. Is it meant to suggest that experiences of marginalization are transferrable and that Hermione believes she knows what's best because she's acting from what is, or what she feels to be, a place of epistemic privilege?****** Is it meant as a renounciation of the idea of epistemic privilege, to demonstrate that a black Muggle-born witch could still be a bad ally and unwilling to listen to others? Is it a place in the text where JKR decided intersectionality is bullshit and thought that Hermione's class status in the Muggle world would give her this kind of arrogance even though she's a black Muggle-born woman?******* As a person who more or less buys into the idea that not having privilege can give someone more insight into the world, I read Hermione's activism as an important learning experience for her and a useful lesson, sort of a teachable moment where we learn that as much as people might care, you have to actually listen to the people you're trying to help if you want to be effective. If Hermione doesn't have the kind of privilege that comes with growing up white and upper-middle class, I'm really and truly not sure what to make of S.P.E.W.
- Hermione's Yule Ball Experience. This is the one that has been sticking in my craw all day. The Yule Ball is the moment when Hermione becomes attractive. Harry's "jaw dropped." Parvati "was gazing at Hermione in unfalltering disbelief. She wasn't the only one either; when the doors to the Great Hall opened, Krum's fan club from the library stalked past, throwing Hermione looks of deepest loathing. Pansy Parkinson gaped at her as she walked by with Malfoy, and even he didn't seem to be able to find an insult to throw at her." (GoF ch. 23, p. 414, US Hardback) Ron pointedly ignores her in the moment, but it's clearly a tipping point in their dynamic, a key moment that makes her future husband sit up and take notice. This is the moment when Hermione becomes socially, sexually, and romantically desirable.******** Other women become envious. Men become sexually interested. Though Viktor Krum, international Quidditch star, has shown interest in her before, this is the moment when that becomes public. And what makes Hermione so suddenly attractive? She's standing differently and she has nice robes and her teeth are smaller and "She had done something with her haird; it was no longer bushy but sleek and shiny." At the start of the next chapter "she confessed to Harry that she had used liberal amounts of Sleakeazy's Hair Potion on it for the ball, 'but it's way too much bother to do every day.'" If Hermione is white, with white hair, this reads as basically a blow-out, which is a pain in the ass and takes a while and makes hair feel crunchy and I wouldn't want to do it every day either, but nbd because there's comparatively little social pressure for white women to blow out hair that becomes orderly in a ponytail or a bun. If Hermione is black, with bushy, frizzy black hair, I cannot imagine any way to read this other than as hair straightening, and as JKR suggesting that Hermione only became attractive and socially/sexually/romantically desirable when she straightened her hair. So if JKR intentionally wrote Hermione as black, or as open to interpretation as black, JKR also suggested that a black woman would only become attractive and have her Disney Princess Moment if/when she complied with eurocentric beauty norms and straightened her hair. She also would've suggested, I suppose, that hair straightening is burdensome and not something that a black witch would choose to do every day, but I don't think that negates the message, implied in the power of that moment at the Yule Ball, that Hermione's hair straightening makes her desirable.
I'm not sure where all that leaves me. Still feeling really very excited that Noma Dumezweni will be playing Hermione Granger. Glad that people are being asked to question the assumption that the default is white. Happy that the qualities I think of as being most associated with Hermione - incredible intelligence, loyalty, conviction, skill, and moral integrity (and, for/from the audience, relatability and lovability) - are being assigned to a black character. That a black actress was picked to play a character who has all those qualities, and in a role that will almost undoubtedly be commercially successful. This is a powerful, important thing, and exactly as it should be.
But also, not believing that JKR really meant to leave Hermione's race open to interpretation. Feeling like if JKR did mean to make Hermione's race open to interpretation, she didn't really do the work of thinking through how race would have affected Hermione in important ways - like the source of her ideological convictions, her motivations for fighting, and her conception of her own desirability. And feeling like this kind of post-hoc representation doesn't work. That you can't retcon race, or sexuality, or any other number of identities, because those aren't boxes you check, they're real identities that affect the way we see and move through the world.
Maybe my tl;dr here is that while Hermione should be black, and definitely should be able to be black, Hermione wasn't meant to be black, and retroactively superimposing blackness on her character isn't as simple as waving a magic wand. (pun totally intended) Making as though representation is as simple as changing a character's skin color after the fact undermines the complexity and centrality of having a marginalized identity, and gives white audiences another reason to embrace the idea of colorblindness instead of having to examine how racial experience change one's experience of the world. At some point it becomes an act of erasure instead of representation, by reducing race to skin color (or any other number of identities to other attributes) instead of exploring the ways that living with specific identities, in a world where those identities create or limit our opportunities, changes who we are, what we do, and why we do it. I still want Noma Dumezweni to play Hermione. I still want to have a black Hermione. I want that very much. I just hope that as the team behind The Cursed Child shape the character, they consider what that means, in all its complexity.
But I don't know that I really do final thoughts on this. I am, however, very curious to hear what other people make of the casting choice. Thoughts?
* "I" = white American, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing something about blackness or Britishness or British blackness/that that limits my ability to imagine how or why race would affect Hermione and her story.
** Among other things, as
ani_mage pointed out, JKR makes a point of describing the ethnicity of her non-white characters, and it would be odd if she did this for every one of them but Hermione. And in general, JKR's descriptions follow along the lines of white human = default. So Krum is Krum but Fleur is half-Veela, Karkaroff is Karkaroff but Madame Maxime is half-giant, Neville is "the boy who kept losing his toad" and Cedric "wouldn't...have wanted to risk his good looks" but Anelina is "A tall black girl" and Cho Chang and Padma and Parvati Patil have names that strongly suggest an ethnicity. There's also the casting and re-casting of Lavendar Brown in the movies. If her whiteness was important enough that the actress had to be re-cast when she started to have a speaking role/became a love interest for Ron, I think it's safe to infer that JKR had an investment in having the movie actors reflect the characters as she'd imagined them, and that casting Emma Watson as Hermione reflects JKR's vision of Hermione as white.*** Are Muggle-borns disadvantaged when they join the wizarding world, in the lull between the two wars? I think yes. At a minimum we know there are well-connected families who wouldn't want anything to do with them. The Malfoys and Goyles and Crabbes and etc. probably aren't sitting on money from nothing. On top of being politically influential, they probably own businesses, and between their political and economic power, I imagine that there are interesting/profitable/desirable employment opportunities and social venues that would be closed to Muggle-borns.
**** h/t to
snowgall for an interesting conversation about this a while back that started me thinking more deeply about how white privilege would affect Hermione's motivations and characterization.***** I imagine/based on what I understand from research this would also have something to do with class. If she's black and her parents are dentists and she presents as part of a professional middle class or upper-middle class family, maybe she wouldn't be exposed, or as exposed, or exposed as a child, to racial epithets?
****** Not the same as white privilege. Originating in Marxist theory and feminist standpoint theory, epistemic privilege is the idea that members of marginalized groups are able to see the world differently, and better/more completely, than people with more social privilege. (see: Feminist Standpoint Theory)
******* I mean arrogant here in both the colloquial and academic/theoretical sense. Because this isn't long and esoteric enough already, for more on arrogant and loving perception see: Marilyn Frye, "In and Out of Harm's Way" in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory and Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception" in Hypatia Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer 1987) 3-19.
******** This whole social construct is dumb and loathsome but shit's real so
no subject
it seemed like JKR wasn't really taking ownership of the fact that she didn't do great with representation. <-- this, this, exactly, so much this!! Way to be so much more concise than I am remotely capable of being.
OTOH, Maggie Stiefvater's position on this sounds amazing, and I think that point is so important. Both of those points!!! (A) Very interesting (and sad and angry-making, if not shocking) that they would make the angry kid (and, the internet tells me, boy kid) black, and that that would be the most popular racebending. That's some fascinating insight into a collective subconscious/implicit bias. (B) The whole idea of accountability and wanting to be held accountable is HUGE. And I think makes things so much better than JKR's tweet because it acknowledges that the lack of representation is a problem that needs a proactive solution and provides a model for people to, instead of getting defensive, admit that they're not doing it entirely right. And we need those models! We need social scripts for people to say "I'm not doing as well as I could be, I want to do better, you calling me out is one thing that helps me do better and I appreciate it." And when she just says it - "The books are shamefully white-washed...there is no point sugar coating the present," that's really big!!
And to borrow a couple of those words, sugar coating is a lot of what JKR's tweet feels like to me. It does feel like "I wish I did better, but I didn't, but let's pretend." Not that useful, especially when it's changing the label and not anything else, re: both race and sexuality. And if she can get that far, I wish/hope she could get the rest of the way, from knowing something should be done to thinking more about how to do it.
(Also, thank you for pointing me to/linking to that post!!! Super interesting. And that might've been the tipping point on wanting to read The Raven Cycle...)
no subject
By saying "Hermione is never explicitly stated to be white" she is implying a purposeful thoughtfulness to that omission that I believe speaks less to legitimate representation on her part, and more to the idea of "white unless stated otherwise" that seems evident in the series. Again, I don't think she's saying "I wrote Black Hermione" but there is an implication behind the tweet that I find uncomfortable, which I think comes down to, why can't JKR just admit that? Though of course, there are all sorts of other issues that could arise if she did, as people are ridiculous, and would likely take that as "Black Hermione is terrible and not canon". But as much as I think JKR is a huge supporter of equality, it would be nice if she could come out and admit the times where her explicit representation was faulty, instead of using obscure examples of subtle/implied/possible representation (Goldstein, Dumbledore, etc) as a defense. Admitting you didn't do as well as you could have isn't a weakness. It's only a bad thing if you make no effort to improve yourself. And it's sort of like, admitting you have a problem is the first step. How can we expect her to have better racial/sexual/religious representation in future works, when she doesn't see that her main characters are very white/straight/Christian, because she never "said so"?
Which is another reason why I love Maggie. Because she admits that the Raven Cycle isn't a good example of racial representation (though sexuality is there and awesome!(, and even though she's never explicitly stated that any of the main characters are white, she can admit that was the non-explicit assumption, and while supportive of POC headcanons, acknowledges that "The fandom has some energetic POC headcanons which are often taken as canon by those who have not read the books yet, but it would be grotesquely misplaced of me to take credit for POC representation where there is not." Because like you said. It's more than just changing skin color.
Yeah, I'm kind of in love with Maggie, I'm not going to lie. She just has a very intelligent and clear voice and she's incredibly talented. I would 100% recommend the Raven Cycle, as it was one of my favorite things that I read last year. And the final book in the series is coming out in March! Fulling planning on rereading all the books right before that. :) But let me know if you decide to give it a go, because I would def be down to chat about it! :D
no subject
- By saying "Hermione is never explicitly stated to be white" she is implying a purposeful thoughtfulness to that omission that I believe speaks less to legitimate representation on her part, and more to the idea of "white unless stated otherwise" that seems evident in the series.
- I think I'd be happier if she tweeted that, and then tweeted something like "That being said I I think myself and all authors could work harder to include more meaningful representation in our work." Or you know, something that both shows her support of alternate Hermione's, while also admitting her own culpability in not actually writing a racially diverse main cast.
- Admitting you didn't do as well as you could have isn't a weakness
Yes, yes, yes, to all of this (to everything, but feel like I should't actually copy-paste the whole comment). That first point is huge and you've put it way more concisely than I did. Implying a purposeful thoughtfulness to that omission - yes. That's exactly it. And that's why it does feel to me like she's trying for brownie points instead of just saying "I support this interpretation of the text." It feels sneaky, like she's using/relying on people's implicit racism and the cultural norms that treat whiteness as the default in order to seem progressive.
And I totally agree with you about the importance of admitting that you could do better. I don't think I'd be feeling this way at all if JKR had said "I fully support interpretations of the text the better reflect my readers and am thrilled to have a black Hermione" or "In the 1990s, when I started writing these books, there wasn't room in children's books for Dumbledore to be explicitly gay or for the Golden Trio to be anything other than white, but I'm thrilled that that's changing. If I had it to do over, I'd love to have written more diversity into the series, and I'm very happy to have this opportunity to affirm that people with Hermione's intelligence and bravery come from all races and ethnicities." Or just something that said "I didn't do as well as I could, but I'm all about doing better and am glad for the positive response." Which was doable, it really was. Though then she'd have to stand by it, and I haven't read her later works so I have no idea how she's doing on that.
Much like WIPs, I'm going to bookmark the Raven Cycle and read it when it's about to be done. (Just added it to my Amazon list so I come back across it.) Will be sure to check it out and it sounds like I'll definitely want to chat about it!!