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Professor Julianne Womble (1:21)
Cold.
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Professor Julianne Womble (1:34)
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.