← Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
The Color of Magic: Race & the Wizarding World
01:10:25
In this Black History Month special, Professor Julian Wamble turns the lens on the five Black characters in the Harry Potter series, Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zabini, and Dean Thomas, and asks a question the fandom...
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- [01:21]
Professor Julianne Womble
Cold.
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- [01:34]
Professor Julianne Womble
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory where we deconstruct the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Because loving something doesn't mean we can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julianne Womble and today, today we're going to do something that in my personal and humble opinion is long overdue. Now, when you all get this, Black History Month in the United States will have been passed and we will have entered into Women's History Month. But as far as I'm concerned, all of these histories are evergreen. And because it occurred to me as I was preparing for this latter part of our half Blood discovery deep dive moment that we haven't talked about a single black person. And I thought, how is that a thing? And yet it's so easily done. And I had every intention of having this to you all during Black History Month, which is February for those of you who are not in the United States. But then I didn't. But again, evergreen and Women's History Month. I said, why not? Let's Put it all together. I mean, we celebrate women quite a bit in our discussions and certainly have been as of late with our discussions of Fleur and Tonks. But we're gonna go a different way this time around. And so I'm really excited because we are going to dive into our five black characters. Angelina Johnson, Lee, Jordan, Kingsley, Shacklebolt, Blaze Abini, and Dean Thomas. Now, listen, I know some of you are like, but Dean Thomas deserves his own episode. And you're not wrong. And he's gonna get it. I will also not lie to you. I was a little bit like, well, does Dean get his own episode? Like, does he have enough? And I said, we will not have pitchforks and torches at the gates because I didn't give Dean his own episode. So he's gonna get his own episode. Now, I will say that when he gets his own episode, I want you all to fill out the survey, and I want substantive answers, because if we get a bunch of I don't knows, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be mad. So we're gonna get a bit of a Dean tease in this episode. We're gonna talk about the other four. We're gonna lead with Angelina because it is. What did I say? Women's History Month as well. And what better way to bridge the gap between black history and women's history by talking about a black woman? You see how I did that? That's inclusion intersectionality, if you will, and I will. Have you ever wondered how race works in the wizarding world? Is racism a thing? Have you ever wondered what the heck we're meant to make of the various black characters that we meet? Or have you ever wondered, for those of you who didn't read the US Version when it first came out, what would have happened if characters like Dean had not been described as black? We're getting into all of it, because that's what today's episode is all about. But you know what we have to get into first. You know, you know, you know we have to bop. Because once you bop, the fun don't stop. So don't stop getting ready for the bop, because the bop is coming to you in three. In two, in. In one. Let's pop. I hope you danced, because this is going to be a good time, and you need to be loose and ready to go. Welcome back. Welcome back to all of you, those of you who are joining us for the first time, those of you who are catching up, those of you who are with us and have been since the beginning, y' all I'm actually very excited for this episode because as I was working on the script forward and thinking through things, I was thinking thoughts that I have not thought in my thinking. And I'm really excited to see what you all think about some of them, because I think that some of you have not been thinking the thoughts and the thinking of the thoughts of the thinking, like me. And I think that some of it is intentional. And so I'm excited for us to dive into this one because I think it's an interesting facet of the magical world, especially juxtaposed to our own, that race is not really a thing, right? That it kind of exists only in the description of certain characters or in the naming of certain characters as a means by which to convey to us that they are a certain ethnicity or racial background. But its meaning, what it means in the magical world is not clear to us. And many of you probably know, but I am a political scientist by day, a podcast host, and general nerd enthusiast by night. And the work that I do as a political scientist focuses on race and identity. And so the class that I teach on Harry Potter is about identity. And anyways, see my published works. But the thing about race in the magical world is that it operates in many ways kind of like it does in Bridgerton, which is that, like, it's there. It exists to a certain degree, but also doesn't. I've been watching Bridgerton, so there's gonna be a couple Bridgerton references. Sorry. Not sorry. Frankly, it's kind of a thing. It's in the Zeitgeist. We've got to stay current friends. And so when we think about Bridgerton and the wizarding world, right? Like, race exists, but the thing about race is that it has two components to it, right? There's the physical part, the part that we can see, the part that we can kind of discern visibly. And then there are the social parts, right? The parts that. Where the kind of physical aspects are imbued with meaning, right? What does it mean to be a black person or an Asian person or a Hispanic person? And I think we get the physical parts in the wizarding world. The meaning, though, is different because the hierarchy that operates within the magical world is one that is more focused on blood status. And there's something really fascinating about that idea, namely, because it's like, how did you all, what, like, overcome racism, right? Like, and it's fascinating in one of the interviews that Jason Isaacs did when he was talking about being Lucius, he talks about the fact that like, you know, what he thought would inform his costuming was the fact that Lucius was a white supremacist because originally they wanted him to have kind of like a Narcissa type style where it was gonna be like, darker hair and then like a white swoop. And Jason Isaacs was like, actually, Lucius isn't doing anything that has darkness because he's like a white supremacist. Which is a fascinating way of thinking about the concept of a character who operates in a world where ostensibly race doesn't exist. And so that the supremacist aspects that exist in the magical world are ones that are derived and kind of built on the idea of pure bloodedness, not race. So the question that we have to kind of grapple with a little bit today as we think about the characters and as we think about their experiences, is really the realities of what it means to be racialized in a world that is not racial inherently. And before we move on to talk about the characters, it's also important that we note something that I think I have to remind people all the time in these books. And I think it's a really solid backdrop for us to have as we think about the idea of race and even gender, but particularly race within the magical world, which is none of the characters are white. Not one person in these books is white. I mean, literally, go back, read them. JKR never describes a single character as white. Not Harry, not Hermione, not Dumbledore, not the Malfoys. She describes, again, skin white as a sheet pallor. All of these racial, like, racialized things, but not racial designations. No character in these books is ever explicitly identified as white. When the casting announcement dropped for the HBO series and people found out that Snape was black, the girls were mad. It was outraged think pieces. People said it was wrong, that it didn't fit the character, that Snape is white. And I kept thinking to myself and asking certain people, where in the text does it say that we get greasy black hair, we get cold dark eyes, we get hooked nose. That's what we get. Nowhere in his description does white appear as an adjective to describe him. Where does that certainty then come from? Whiteness is like the default in this world. That's where it comes from. The background of it all is whiteness. And when we think about defaults, we think about it in terms of, this is just the way that it is set up. This is just the way that it goes. This is just how we understand the world. So you don't have to say that a Character is white because whiteness is what you get when nothing else is specified. When you don't get a tall black boy named Gene Thomas, when you don't get Parvati and Padma Patil, when you don't get a Cho Chang, when you don't get an Anthony Goldstein, when you don't get those names. There is an assumption that is made by the general reader that that must mean that that person is white. And it is only when we see characters race be questioned that we begin to ask certain questions about their racial background. This happened again when Hermione was cast as a black woman, when Harry Potter and the Cursed Child first came out many moons ago. And everyone went back and checked the text and pulled all of these documents about the description of Hermione, but it was not describing her race. It was describing the conditions of her skin tone, right, that she had gotten tan, which, again, is describing things that can happen to anyone. But we tend to ascribe those actions to white people. And the only time we ever really get race again is in naming or when someone is explicitly described as black. And so I want us to keep that in mind as we move through this episode because I think it is actually really important, because I think there is a way in which we are invited to, as we are even in the Bridgerton universe, to see this as a kind of utopian understanding that, like, well, isn't it great to live in a world where race doesn't exist? Because if race doesn't exist, then racism doesn't exist and isn't it nice? And it feels like such a great escape from the reality of our own world when the hierarchy itself, you know, the pure blood hierarchy, is grounded in something different. And we see people who would historically be on the receiving end of that vitriol, putting it out into the world. Seeblaze Zabini. Right? And so there is a space that tells us, like, hey, maybe this isn't what we thought it was, and that this world is different than ours. And that's something that I want to kind of unpack as we go through some of these characters and think about who they are, what they bring to bear and how they navigate the space. Because one of the questions that I asked my class when I was teaching about Bridgerton was, was, is it that the Bridgerton universe and the characters of color they're in simply are living in a raceless society where race does not matter in any capacity? Or is it that the characters of color are simply assimilating in a way where they aren't highlighting their racial differences in any meaningful way, but that it still holds meaning to them and that everyone is just operating in a level of suspended animation of sorts as it pertains to race. Because throughout that show we see lots of people making very particular choices about their names, about the way that their dialect operates, about the way the when they choose to speak in different languages. And so it's like, well, no. So race is a thing, culture is a thing, ethnicity is a thing. And what we're watching and witnessing is that people are making conscious efforts to blend in in such a way that no one recognizes outside of maybe the physical differences that you are not like everyone else on other dimensions. And in the Harry Potter world, it almost feels the same, right where it's like we do, there is a singular moment where there is a racialized statement that's made and other than that, they are described as not being white and we keep it moving and it doesn't hold any meaning. But is it true that this is kind of like the utopian racelessness that people out in the world are hyping up? Or is it just that one, there's not a lot of characters of color to begin with and two, they're just assimilating in a way that like if you don't talk about it, we won't talk about it, but it still holds meaning. It just is silent. Like, I mean, in the words of Oprah, were you silent or were you silenced? Only time will tell.
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- [18:21]
Professor Julianne Womble
And I know, I know, I know that some of us are already like, but race doesn't do the same thing in the wizarding world. Why do we need to talk about it? We know the hierarchy that matters, right? The pure blood hierarchy has slurs in it, right? Like it has everything that we need. We don't need to add race on top of that. The whole point is that it doesn't exist in the magical world. I also get a comment a lot when I bring things up like this up when it comes to Harry Potter. And people are like, but this is because you're from the US and race does a different thing in the US than it does in other parts of the world. And in those parts of the world, class tends to be the kind of social delineator. And I don't disagree with that reality. But I also think that we have to consider the fact that one, white supremacy is ubiquitous. It is not. It didn't skip anyone. And when we think about the colonial superpowers that existed historically, it was all racialized, which means that the idea of superiority on the grounds of one's identity, racial identity, did not skip any country at all whatsoever. And so I think it's really important for us to think about those particular realities, because I think when we live in a world where so many countries are still grappling with the vestiges of colonialism, when we're living in a time where you have famous individuals like Meghan Markle still navigating the ills and the ridiculousness of racism, I think that it's hard for us to make a claim that race doesn't matter. And I think what's so fascinating about the wizarding world is that it's like, how is it that you all were able to maintain certain parts of the non magical world but somehow jettison racism? And I think the answer to that mostly is just like plot. But it is interesting because we as readers take a lot of comfort in the fact that this facet of our own existence is not present in these books. And I think that this is something that most scholars of race would call racial evasiveness, because I think that that's different in some ways in the absence of race altogether. Race evasiveness is when a society makes an active decision not to organize itself around race explicitly while still reproducing racial assumptions underneath the surface. So the hierarchy itself gets displaced onto something else. In this case, blood status. But the assumptions don't disappear. Right? And I think for me, what's clear is that Rowling wrote this text from a racial default and Assumed that the world she built shared that default right, which meant that black characters in these books are navigating a world whose baseline isn't them inside a text whose narrative perspective can't see them, written by an author who didn't think she needed to explain any of it. And there's a question this text can't answer, which is, what do the characters that we experience think about race? The one moment that comes up is a moment where Pansy Parkinson makes fun of Angelina's braids and she says, it looks like you've got snakes coming out of your head. And I was like, interesting. And I wonder. And Angelina just kind of like shrugs it off and keeps it moving. And it just made me think like, if I was Angelina, I would have hexed Pansy and actually made her had snakes come out of her head. You know what I'm saying? Like, I got the power to do that. I'm doing it. But she shrugged it off, which leads me to believe. Like, and interestingly enough, I'm like, are you used to this? Is this something that you've experienced irl? And so you're just kind of like, well, there just goes another like racist person saying racist stuff. Right? We don't ever really get to see these characters experience that kind of behavior. And I'm like, is it because you don't know how? I mean, Dean Thomas grew up in the Muggle world in the 90s. Like racism is a thing. And so it is fascinating that we are kind of led to believe because we don't spend so much time with these characters that like, race just doesn't hold any meaning in the magical world. And it's like, how could that be true when so many of these people still live in the non magical world? And it's interesting in one of the fanfics. Oh my God, which one is it? I can't remember which one it is, but. And it's not even in just in one. It's kind of a theme where Draco is so appalled by racism. He's appalled at the idea that people would discriminate on the grounds of like, race, despite the fact that he himself comes from this kind of pure blooded supremacist belief structure. And I think it's so funny because it's like, well, sure, he hasn't been around Muggles that much, but like, is racism such a facet of the non magical world that like you and that you don't know anything about it? Like, okay, I suppose. But it is. And everyone. So many people I shouldn't say everyone, but so many people use fics as a means by which to kind of like be like oh, you see Draco, you see how you're mad about racism. That's what you're up to. And it's so fascinating how this world invites us to really see the characters as living in a space that is evading racial realities by virtue of ostracization. And like living in a world that is completely cloistered off from the non magical community as if racism is not like a human condition. And all we know, like in the kind of post canonical lore about the life of the magical world pre the statute of secrecy, was that individuals like the Malfoys were parlaying with royalty and nobility. And you mean to tell me that they didn't pick up a couple things? Okay, I suppose. And in the midst of it all, even in the Muggle world, right, like Harry never engages in any sort of thought process. He notices when people are black, but he never actually like ascribes a meaning to it. And here's the thing, we know that the Dursleys have got to be racist. There's just no way that they're not. There's simply no way that they are not. And so the fact that Harry somehow walked out of there without that belief structure. I've got questions and again, I know the answer is probably plot, but I think for the purposes of the exercise of this episode, it's interesting for us to think about the absence of racial discourse in the text is evidence of whose perspective we're inhabiting. Because if you are a person who doesn't have to think about race, then you don't think about race. And so you don't write a story where race is important and you write characters that are from minority spaces but don't engage in any sort of behavior or thought process that would invite you to think of them that way. And I think that there's something there for us to unpack about what that actually means and whether or not that's a good thing. And I tell students all the time whenever I talk about Harry Potter to the younger, like Gen Z contingent. You know, when these books came out they were diverse, right? Like the fact that you had discernible people of color at Hogwarts was a wild journey because it was such an unknown then in the late 90s to have books where you had kids of color present. And that was the bar and it was in hell. And so in many ways it makes sense. And I recognize that like some of this is looking at this through the lens of the 2026. But I also do think that if you're going to make the conscious effort to put people of color in your books, make it mean something, give them something. Having them there and having their identities be meaningless in terms of like how it informs the way that they operate in this world feels wasteful. It feels to me somewhat offensive. Like we wouldn't ask other identity groups to just be in the space and not have that hold any meaning. And yet that's in some ways what's being asked of Kingsley and Dean and Angelina and Lee and Blaze that they just exist in the space, but that like the meaning of what it is to be five white, five black people in a like outrageously majority white space. Some of them are coming from a non magical background where race is going to mean something if only where you grew up and the spaces and places that you see people. And now you've entered into this magical world where everyone doesn't look like you and everything that you understand about yourself is now what turned on its head because no one is acknowledging that there is meaning behind your identity. I that could have been an interesting narrative. I don't know. It just feels like I think this, and this is the issue with diversity for diversity's sake is that when you are only doing it for aesthetics, you are completely ignoring the realities of what it means to actually live in those bodies. And again, there's something to be said about not wanting JKR to like cosplay in her mind what it means to be a black person. And I understand that reality as well. But it is not lost on me that somehow race just disappears, even though it is very present. And I'm wondering about the intentionality behind that. And whether or not we as readers, particularly as children, are meant to just see the idea of people being in the space, but not questioning what it actually means that they are there.
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- [29:54]
Professor Julianne Womble
As promised, we're doing a Black History Month Women's History Month hybrid. And starting with Angelina and the reality is, is that Angelina is the only black woman of any consequence in this series. She's the only character in all of Harry Potter who has an explicitly racialized experience on the page. And it's a sentence and then the narrative moves on. And I think I mentioned it earlier, but I want us to sit with it for a little bit now that we're in our Angelina Johnson moment. Because in a world where we are told that race is essentially beside the point, non important, and has no social meaning, where the hierarchy du jour is blood status, where the thing that actually determines your fate is whether you are pure blood or Muggle born, a white girl still finds it necessary to comment on a black girl's hair in front of everyone. It's not snakes, y'. All. I just went to look it up. It's worms. And it is fascinating that this happens, right? Because it is certainly on the macro side of the microaggression scale, but there's also a very particular history behind it. And why would J.K. rowling put that in the text? What is this meant to communicate to us? Right. Like, obviously, Pansy is a Slytherin, and we know that they are the ones that tend to be cast as the more prejudicial of the people at Hogwarts. And we know that Pansy is certainly one of the loudest and most outspoken people as it pertains to this particular belief structure. But, like, why have that moment in the books? Like, why was that a necessity? It seems odd that you would take this one moment and kind of pop us out of the world. And it's interesting because I remember I said to a friend once, like, oh, like, there's no racism in the magical world and she is a black woman. Was like, yes, there is. It's the moment with Angelina and Pansy. And I was like, oh, right, yes. And it was like, right, that moment resonated with you in a way that it didn't resonate with me. Right? Because there is a very clear understanding that Angelina is the only black woman in these books. And so probably many, many, many young black girls who read these books were like, my good. So. And maybe we saw ourselves also in. In Hermione. But I think that the explicit nature of Angelina's race brought her to the fore for many young black girls. So to the point where that moment stood out to them. And it's fascinating, again, because it's an intentional moment, because why keep it in. You've already. You. We know in the editing process so many things were taken out. And yet that moment got to stay in. What is it meant to indicate to us not only about the role that race plays, but who is perpetuating some of the more prejudicial, racially prejudicial behavior and language. And I also love Angelina, and it was something that I hadn't thought about before, which is the fact that, like, she becomes the Quidditch captain in Order of the Phoenix. So now she's this black woman, black young woman, leading a team that includes Harry, the chosen one, the most favorite wizard. Famous, not favorite, although I'm sure he's some people's favorite, but the most famous wizard of his generation, with a genuine hero complex. And at this particular year, struggling, fighting for his life against the Ministry of Magic, the Daily Prophet, his own internal struggle with the bit of Voldiva that was sitting inside of him. He is fighting. Umbridge is running around here like a pink menace. And her entire arc in this book is trying to keep him calm so that he can continue to play. She's trying to get him to fall in line so he doesn't do anything to get himself suspended from the team, which he ultimately does. And I get the idea of, like, why she's doing this. He is a fantastic seeker, and she is like wood. She trained at the knee of wood. She wants to win and she wants her best team. And she's doing exactly what a captain is meant to do. But then when I, like, pulled back for a second and I'd never. This is. These are. This is one of the thoughts that I had never thought when I was thinking is that, like, we have this black woman spending a substantial portion of her time in the story managing the emotional volatility of a white protagonist, absorbing his disruptions, trying to smooth things over, trying to keep the peace so that the institution that she is in charge of, in this case the Gryffindor Quidditch team, can keep functioning. And it made me think, where do you learn to do that? To go along, to get along, to just kind of. There are moments when you're like, it's not worth the fight. You've got to relax. And she was angry with him because he couldn't do it, because he felt so entitled. And again, like, let's not take anything away from Harry. He had a lot going on. But so did Angelina. Not in the same way, y'. All. I get it. But it is fascinating when we think about the fact that for her, she is spending so much energy trying to navigate the ebbs and the Flows of this white guy who gets to rage against the machine. And, yes, there are consequences, but it's like Angelina. Your job is to make sure the team is effective, and what you're ultimately ending up doing is doing the emotional labor for Harry. And there are so many tropes that play into that particular dynamic. But it's also the kind of thing where, as a marginalized, minoritized person across many identity spectrums, you learn that there are some fights that aren't worth fighting, that there are some spaces and places where you just don't go off that you just have to be intentional about when you're going to let something get under your skin and when you're not. And as a black woman, it strikes me that Angelina would be so adept at this, particularly a black woman. And again, I mean, we have to assume that there are others, but of the ones that we meet, of the students that we meet that are named Angelina, and, well, lavender was black once. Lavender was black once, and then she wasn't. And that is a whole other conversation because that's movies, not books. But there was once a black Lavender who was not black by the time she got with Ron. And so we're just gonna say that Angelina is the only. And what that must then mean, if we take that at face value, based on what we know, that she's navigating a space by herself and she doesn't get to pop off like Harry. Like, he has the privilege of being the chosen one and the, you know, the darling of Dumbledore. Dumbledore's darling. Hmm. I like alliteration. I think it is so interesting to think of her in that way. And we don't spend a lot of time with her. And, you know, I remember reading the books for the first time and kind of being like, angelina, don't you get what he's going through right now? Like, sis, relax. But as I was thinking about this episode, I kept thinking, she is trying to do a job that was really held by one person the whole time because they didn't even have it the year before. And she is trying to maintain the same kind of rigor and intensity that Wood did, while also trying to, like, take care of the team and its players, which is a completely different responsibility that she takes on and feels very gendered to me. And so I think when I think of Angelina, I think of the reality that so much of her narrative is not her own, and it kind of orbits around these kind of white men because, I mean, she goes to the yule ball with oh gosh, is it Fred? I can't remember which Weasley twin, but she goes with one of them and you all will tell me. You all love correcting me. That's why I pretend like I don't know anything so that you walk and pull out your books and be like it's so and so and feel strong and good. You're welcome. But while her narrative is so constrained, it also feels so real and racialized at the same time of existing in a space that isn't meant to be racialized. Because the like the trope of like the black friend who's like helping you try to figure out the world and is trying to get you to like chill out. Like that's a tale as old as time. And yet somehow that's what she's doing. Despite the fact that J.K. rowling is like race doesn't exist here. She's the only one who gets microaggressed. Never Dean, never Lee, never Kingsley. But Angelina gets it. Never Blaze, but Angelina gets it. I don't know what to make of that. Hopefully we can have a post episode chat to talk about it. Foreign
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- [41:39]
Professor Julianne Womble
The next character that I want to talk about, and it won't be for long because we don't get that much of him is Lee Jordan, who is one of the more joyful characters in these books. He's funny and warm. His Quidditch commentary is literally the best. I remember first reading these books and cackling the way that he can't keep his bias to himself while McGonagall tries to reel him in is hysterical. He is Fred and George's best friend, and he is genuinely beloved. He is also almost entirely defined by his proximity to Fred and George. These white characters, Lee Jordan exists in the text in relation to the Weasleys. His humor gets filtered through their dynamic. His presence. And the narrative is almost always in their orbit. And Winfred and George make a spectacular exit from Hogwarts in the Order of the Phoenix. Incredible, ironic, and we love them for it. Lee all but disappears. His place in the story is tethered to theirs, which tells us something very specific about the kind of belonging that he has. And the belonging he has is conditioned on his relationship with the aforementioned Weasley twins. He's accepted and loved, but he's an adjacent character. He serves no real purpose outside of the Quidditch commentary. And when Fred and George go, we get nothing else from him, really. And I just wonder again, and this is going to be a theme for us to think about throughout the episode, is what's the point? Why make him black? What was the utility of. Feels almost like, well, they can't say that I didn't. I did. And we. And he was there, and he was funny, and he had a tarantula and he cracked jokes, which is a very, very bad trope in and of itself. Another black friend moment. Another instance where a black character in a deracialized or unracialized or a racially invasive specific space is performing a very familiar and accepted trope of black characters in fiction. Then now, the narrative itself is so clear. We don't need to know about Lee Jordan because, well, he's funny and he cracks jokes and him and Fred and George are friends, and what more do we need to know? And listen, y', all, I know that some of this may feel like a stretch, and it's like, well, we didn't have that much time. And maybe there's more to him because Harry just. And Harry just didn't get it all. Very true. But what is interesting about this, right, is that we get more information about Justin Finch, Fletchley, Zachariah Smith. We learn more about Marietta Edgecomb and her family than we ever learn about any of these characters. And Lee Jordan is in more books than Marietta. I'm not saying that we needed a fully fleshed understanding of who these characters are. It's also not lost on me, though, that we have details about some of these characters that make no sense in the grand scheme of things. Like, we didn't need to know that Justin Finch Fletchley was gonna go to Eton. I guess that was the indication that he was Muggle born. But they could have just said that we knew that. And then he got petrified and like that's an important plot point. But he also could have just gotten petrified and we didn't need to know any of that. And we would have assumed he was Muggle born because, well, he got petrified. Right? There are characters that we learn a lot about and none of them are our black characters. And Lee Jordan is just another example of that particular reality. And I think when we think about the why of it, that's what is so striking to me. Like, why did we have to have this character be the one who is basically just like the funny best friend, which is very 90s. It's very Dion and Clueless. It's very Gabrielle Union in 10 Things I Hate about yout and I don't even remember her name. If you don't know these movies, it's time for you to learn your history, friends. But that's what Lee Jordan is giving here. And I think that that's because that is how J.K. rowling understood the role of these characters when she was writing this book. Despite the fact that there is no racism, there is still something happening underneath the hood in this world that is not racially kind of foreign.
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Professor Julianne Womble
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Professor Julianne Womble
Okay, y', all, we have to have a conversation about the Kingsley Shackle Bolt of it all. Shackle Bolt, really? It just. It just one Just can't help but wonder what the hell was a thought on that. Shackle Bolt. Of all the names, every other black character has a name that has nothing to do with much of anything. Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan Dean, Thomas Blayze, Zabini. And she said, Kingsley Shacklebolt. Okay, you got it. He is, by every measure the most successful black character in the series. He's a senior Auror. There's that word again. He's trusted explicitly by Dumbledore, and he becomes the Minister of Magic by the end of the series. He's the most powerful person in Wizarding Britain. The uncomfortable question that we haven't asked is, like, what was the cost? Because in many ways, and, and, and again, I think it's important for us to think about, like, what he looks like in the grand scheme of things, because in the movie, they kind of give him a much more kind of Afrocentric vibe. We know that he has an earring. Harry describes it, but he is fully assimilated, competent, measured, authoritative, trusted by everyone around him, never making anything about race, operating entirely within the existing institutional structure. He's first one of its enforcers, and then as its leader. He is someone who made himself perfectly legible to the dominant system. His success is not illegitimate, and achieving institutional power is not a betrayal. That would be an absurd argument. The text presents his assimilation as a completely unproblematic, though natural occurrence, as though this is just who Kingsley is. And I think that's worthy of us thinking about more deeply, because in the real world, black people who achieve the kind of prominence of Kingsley don't do it in a vacuum. And there would be complaints, people would be upset. And what's more is it's an enormous labor and a lot to overcome. And here's the gig, the gag and the truth. There's no way that your name is Kingsley Shacklebolt and you're just running through this place with no problem. And again, it's like the desire for there to not be racism does not negate the fact that there probably is racism, if for nothing else. The man's name is Kingsley Shacklebolt. And so it's and we also, like, see Kingsley. And he is perfect in every way. He's exceptional. He's good to a fault. He is outrageous. Even the minister, the Mughal prime minister is like, but that guy's amazing. And in the end, he becomes a black prime minister. The black minister for magic. And I remember being like, excellent. And I was hopeful, right? Because it was in 2007 and it was right when Obama was running for president. And I was like, maybe J.K. rowling pulled a Trelawney. And I think that there, I mean, the name itself gives us a lot to think about. And I don't know if many of you have ever seen his wand, but it is the only wand that exists in the world that, in the wizarding world that is like Afro influenced, which feels. It gives me the ick friends. And so again, in a world where race doesn't exist, it exists. It's just quiet. Shackle Bolt. Okay. And I, I was so happy when he became minister for magic. But I think that there's also something so fascinating about it. And if I'm not mistaken, he becomes its interim, is it not? I think he becomes the interim. It's not even. Why do I feel like that? But what else is interesting? I don't even. I can't remember. I can't find it. But what else is interesting? And I love. It's one of my favorite moments in the entire series, and it's a quote that I make all the time, is when they invite Kingsley onto the wireless Wizarding network, or whatever it's called. It is Kingsley who is like, you all need to remember to cast protective charms over Muggle dwellings, because at the end of the day, we are all human and we need to be protecting them because they are also out here being targeted. A black man is reminding them. After all these other people have been on this, this network for however long. Don't forget about people who don't live the same way that you do. Don't forget that there are other people whose lives are being affected disproportionately, even more than yours, by what Voldemort is doing. It is this black guy. It is Kingsley Shacklebalt who reminds us that non magical people are also being affected by this. That's not nothing to me. And again, and this whole episode is me reading into this in a way that we do for many characters. So I don't feel bad about it. But it is not lost on me that he has a sense and an understanding and feels compelled to vote to voice the fact that he recognizes how selfish we can be in times of great fear, great pain, that we can retreat inward and say it's every person for themselves. And Kingsley says, remember the humanity of these people who cannot defend themselves the way that you might be able to using magic. It's not lost on me that it's him. And again, it's one of these moments. Where does that particular inclination come because you are simply that good and are you so much better than all the other people who have been guests on this show? Or does that come from a very specific place, an understanding of what it is to be the scapegoat in a world where people are outrageously prejudicial against you? And so the invitation is to reject that particular thing. Because it is also Kingsley in that quote, who highlights two hierarchies that permeate the wizarding world, the Wizards first hierarchy and the Purebloods first hierarchy. He is naming the invisible hierarchies that completely define the way that these individuals within the magical world understand themselves as being superior to non magical people and to people of lower blood statuses in the minds of pure bloods. He is naming the invisible structures that we don't hear talked about. No one is talking about the wizard non magical hierarchy. No one is bringing that up and talking about that, even though it is literally the thing that everyone subscribes to. And he is reminding them to not allow that to dictate the way that they behave. This black guy. It's not lost on me. I wasn't sure we should do a post episode chat, but I'm hopeful that some of this brings things up for you all that you want to talk about because I want to talk more about this. I don't know if we'll do a Prof. Response episode, but if we have a good pro post episode chat then maybe. Anyways, it's not lost on me. Foreign.
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- [58:53]
Professor Julianne Womble
Blaze Zabini I'm not going to hold you as a black Slytherin. I stay in Blaze. I have been looking forward to talking about him since I started planning this episode because I think he is genuinely one of the most interesting characters in this entire conversation because he's a Slytherin. He's pure blood. He's wealthy, aristocratic, and so contemptuous of Muggle born's blood traders and most people in general, by the values of the wizarding world and the dominant order of things. Blaze is everything they dreamed of. He is exactly what a person is supposed to aspire to be. Old money, pure blood, the right house, the right company. He just happens to be black, right? Like his blackness feels like happenstance, and it doesn't grapple with the tension. And by it, I mean the text. Not a single sentence. It reminds me of. There's a. An old show back in the day called Dynasty, and there was an actress by the name of Diane Carroll who played a character named Dominique Devereaux. A lot of Ds. And when they were writing the part, she told them, write my character's lines as if you would write her like she was a white man. And so she had these like, crazy reads, like she would just drag people left and right. And there was no sense of, like, inferiority. And she just. And she was also rich and just powerful and just outrageous. And Blaze reminds me of this because he operates from a space that we don't necessarily associate, at least in our own minds, with black individuals. He has fully adopted an ideology that in the Muggle world, would almost certainly be turned against him. Pureblood mania has the structure of racial superiority logic, the anxiety about bloodline contamination, the obsession with purity, the contempt for those deemed lesser mudbloods, blood traders, and people who don't measure up. Racial hierarchy is just dressed up and becomes that hierarchy. And Blaze is inside it fully and comfortably and without any sort of internalized conflict. And I don't think it's an internalized racism in the way that we traditionally use the term. I don't think that Blaze is devaluing his own blackness because in his world, blackness doesn't matter. His blood status does. And by that measure, Blaze is at the top operating entirely rationally within the hierarchy that his world has constructed, the hierarchy that he has bought into. And so in that way, I think that he's not stupid because he's in control. He's been naturalized, socialized in understanding of this world in such a way that he is not interested in trying to be anything other than what he is. In many ways, Blaze the beanie is the wizarding world's racial politics in miniature. A portrait of what a total hierarchy looks like when it works exactly the way that it's designed to work. He's not a black person from the Muggle world. He is a black person who has all the power and privileges of a society that has given him the power and the privilege and so he doesn't have to engage in the same kind of behaviors as other people. And in some ways, right, like he is the dream. He is the one that everyone is trying to aspire to be, right? Like in a raceless society, that's what you want. You want to have like the black guy who has all the trappings of Malfoy, of the Malfoys, because it means that the Malfoys didn't get it because of their race. Which means that we don't have to worry because racism is over. And isn't that great? Thank you Blaze. Thank you so much, Blaze, for your service, for your work. We really appreciate it because that is what he is serving. And again, I ask what's the utility of that? And what's more, and I, I would be remiss to not bring this up. It's not lost on me that like, part of the reason why Blayse has been able to get where he is is because his mom is hot and is basically like a black widow and has killed all her husbands. Or at least it's alluded to that that is what she has done. All her husbands mysteriously end up dead. So that's at least our second black woman in the text that we don't meet for real but we hear about and her claim to fame is killing men and taking their money. Cool. Yep, J.K. rowling really did a bang up job at creating a raceless society.
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- [64:39]
Professor Julianne Womble
As I said before, Dean Thomas is going to get his own episode. But we can't have this episode and not talk about Dean because his story is too relevant to everything that we've been talking about to skip over. In many ways, Dean Thomas is the most developed black character in the series. He is in Harry's dorm all seven years. He dates Ginny Weasley, he joins Dumbledore's army, he plays for the Gryffindor Acquidditch team for a spell. He goes on the run in Deathly Hallows. He fights at Hogwarts relative to the other black characters. He is genuinely present in this story. And let me tell you something about what I found out, putting this episode together, that I think we need to think about, because I posted on Instagram months ago after having a conversation in my class about Dean. You know, about how he didn't know who his father was, which is why he was on the run, because he didn't know whether his dad was magical or not. He didn't know if he was Muggle born. And someone brought up to me the fact. There was a couple of things that came up. One that we basically made up that Dean was black, and that nowhere in the text does it say that. And I went immediately back and found it in the text. And then I found out that his race was added for the American market as some sort of representation strategy, that Rowling's British editor thought that the chapter was too long and cut everything considered to be surplus. And Dean's blackness was surplus to those requirements, basically. And so in the UK edition, Dean's race is implied through culture, cultural coding. He supports West Ham, which has a historically significant black fan base. And so it was expected that British readers would infer his race, but American readers would not know that. And so they gave us one line that just said he was a tall black boy. And neither version does very much with the information once it's established. And then apparently, after I was going on this whole tirade about how Dean was on the run because he didn't know who his dad was, which I was like, that is the trope of all tropes. Apparently it is said that JKR wrote and put in an earlier draft of the Chamber of Secrets that was then ultimately cut, that Dean's dad was a wizard and never told his family because he wanted to protect them, and that when he refused to join the Death Eaters, he was killed. And so Dean grew up thinking his father had just left and run out on his family. And he didn't know where he'd come from, and he didn't know if he was a half blood or a Muggle born. And Rowling said that she cut it because she felt like it was an unnecessary digression. And so she sacrificed Dean's story for Neville's because Neville's arc was more central to the plot. And so this black character's voyage of self discovery got cut. And in the absence of that story, what remains on the page is a black boy who doesn't know who his dad is. And that feels intentional. And there are other things that happen to Dean's story, but I don't want to get into all of it because we have to save it for his episode. But I think that at the end of the day, one of the things that Dean offers us is the ability to really dive into the intentionality behind some of the narratives placed on some of these characters and the fact that some of them are fleshed out and some of them were not. And the question that we have to grapple with is the why of it all. Who gets their story told and who doesn't? And what does that mean for us? And what does it invite us to think about or, and more importantly, not think about when it pertains to these characters of color other than just their presence in the space? Now, that was our little Dean Thomas teaser, our dtt, if you will. We will get to Dean Moore in the coming weeks. We've now reached the point in the episode where I'm going to give a brief reflection. In this episode, we had five black characters. A Quidditch captain who navigates a race evasive world by managing the emotional volatility, volatility of the white protagonist. A beloved friend whose belonging is tethered to the proximity to white characters. An institutional achiever whose success the text presents as frictionless and self evident. A pure blood ideologue who has fully adopted the logic of the dominant hierarchy. A boy whose backstory was cut, whose blackness was considered surplus to requirements, who loses his girlfriend to the invisible white hero. Each of them has found a way to make themselves legible to the dominant order, shaped themselves in some way to fit a world whose default setting is not them. The text, written from the inside of that default, from the inside of the perspective of a white British protagonist, or at least we presume he's white. We don't know, because whiteness is never explicitly stated. But that protagonist never has to think about each other any of this. He doesn't notice what's happening. It just presents them as they are. As if who they are emerged in a vacuum. As if the world they were born into didn't shape them at every turn. In many ways, Bridgerton clarifies something here. Even in its fantasy, even in its revisionism, it understands that integration is not the same thing as equality. Being admitted to the tan doesn't mean the tan was built for you. It means you've been allowed in on the dominant group's terms and you'd better act accordingly. Bridgerton at least knows it's doing this. I don't think the wizarding world does, and Rowling didn't think she needed to make it explicit because she was writing from the space of the default. The question of what it costs to live in a world not built for you never occurred to her as a question worth asking or a perspective worth considering. It is not lost on me that at no point during Harry's kind of self discovery does his identity ever play a part in why he doesn't believe he belongs in the magical world. I think that this book series contains characters real consequential black characters who are almost entirely legible through white eyes. We don't know what Angelina thinks about Pansy's comment when she gets back to her dormitory that night. We don't know what Lee Jordan tells us about his family at Christmas, about what it's like being the one black kid in that particular orbit. We don't know what it's like to be Kingsley when he walks into a room of Aurors for the first time and understood exactly what was expected of him. We don't know what Blaze Zabini's relationship with his own identity actually is. And we certainly don't know what Dean made of any of this. We don't know because we are always in Harry's head and Harry doesn't think about it because Harry is the default. No one in these books is white technically true also, in every way that matters, narratively and structurally a complete fiction. Rowling wrote a world with a racial default and the characters who are not that default had to navigate it every single day. And the text does not give us their experience of that navigation. It gives us Harry, watching them from a distance, sometimes literally under an invisibility cloak and moving on to his next adventure. And the reality is, and I think that what I want us to think about is how true that is for us. How many of us move through our worlds from our various positions of privilege and think nothing of the realities of the other people who are navigating the space with us. I want us to think about how similar we are to the people in the magical world who had to be reminded to consider non magical people. We are currently living in a time that is very, very very scary and it is so easy to retreat away to places that feel safe to turn on our default settings to disassociate. But the reality is, is that to be able to do that is the height of privilege to be able to operate in the world the way that Harry does, where he can observe the other but not think about what it must be like to be the other. That is what we're invited to do in this text. We are grateful that these characters exist because it means that there's diversity. But we're not invited to think about what it means to be the diversity. We're not invited to think about the positions that these individuals are in. The fact that Dean doesn't know who his dad is or how he even ended up at Hogwarts. He has no one to talk to. He is alone in this world and he is one of five black characters, one of four black students at Hogwarts. And he's just got to go with it. And so do we. And Harry thinks nothing of it. Again, I just want to re emphasize this. I want us to think about how many times we from our positions of privilege have to be reminded to care about those people who it is so easy to forget about.
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- [76:20]
Professor Julianne Womble
Foreign. This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and if you liked today's episode. First of all, thank you. Please feel free to like rate, subscribe and do all the things that one does where pods are cast y'. All. This was fun. I really flexed a lot of muscles and if this felt like a lecture, I'm sorry if that's not your vibe. Although I feel like that's normally the vibe I bring. But if it wasn't, sorry, I had a great time. These are characters that I don't get to talk about a lot and I'm really glad that we did this. And by we I mean that I'm glad that I forced myself to do this. I hope that you all have some things to say because I think there should be a post episode chat. There's also the Cho Chang survey that you have extra time to do now. I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this episode and on Cho Chang. As always, check us out on patreon@patreon.com criticalmagictheory y', all. There are so many things for you to say and respond to, and I can't wait to hear. Until then, be critical and stay magical, my friends. Byee.
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