im rereading harry potter and it talks about hermiones hair a lot is that just a coincidence or is there something im missing?

fozzie:

#harry potter #antisemitism #racism #heteronormativity #media erasure #long post

i don’t think it’s a coincidence. my parents noticed that too. my mom was especially interested in a line from rita skeeter that insulted hermione’s hair with some specific phrase that my mom investigated and found to be a slur degrading jews’ stereotypically thick, curly hair. still, as far as i can remember (i’m not into harry potter so i don’t really know, sorry) there is no canonical reference to hermione being jewish.

thissss is one of the things that really irks me – hermione’s heritage didn’t have to be ambiguous. she could have been explicitly, canonically jewish or smth?? but even more than that, hermione didn’t have to be white. none of the characters did, but rowling makes a point of depicting hermione as a character against whom others are prejudiced, and black people (women, especially) get just as much, probably more, flak for having thick, curly hair than jewish people do. there’s just???? no excuse???? this is something i’ve been talking to my parents about a lot lately (specifically erasure in harry potter) because i was trying to explain to them that dumbledore’s unmentioned sexuality doesn’t contribute anything to the fight against heteronormativity. i kind of went on a pointless tangent there lmfao sorry but basically

• i don’t think it’s a coincidence
• i think she’s supposed to be at least ethnically jewish
• if rowling wanted to make a point about prejudice then she should have considered /not/ making hermione white
• even more than that she should have considered /not/ making other characters white, no matter what point she was or was not trying to make with them
• any of the significant protagonists could have been and imo should have been poc
• thanks 4 making dumbledore gay and never ever mentioning in canon anything except straightness
• would it rly have been too hard to just have /one/ canonically queer character? not even a main character, just a throwaway line to acknowledge that they exist?
• also: if rowling wanted to make a point about prejudice maybe she shouldn’t have depicted muggles as Lesser Beings lmfao
• even the wizards who are nice to muggles do so in a frankly condescending way??
• and the wizards could easily overpower the muggles if they were so inclined???? and they canonically have significant influence on muggle politics???????? that distribution of power makes me rly uncomfortable