Disclaimer: For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Harry Potter books and movies (and may be about to hunker down and read the seven iconic books) I’m going to say it now: Spoiler Warning!
Race In Y.A. Literature
Race and culture in Y.A. fantasy, sci-fi and “slice of life” genres can be handled...uh, in an interesting manner. Some books, like Kasie West’s On the Fence, only mention the race of non-Caucasian characters. Others, like Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor and The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, not only mention err’body’s skin tone and artfully intertwine different cultures into the story and their characters, but do it in a way that breathes life into the characters but does not make the characters’ race and culture the only significant thing about them. And there are the books that live somewhere in between.
These different ways of handling race, ethnicity, and culture fascinate me, and as an avid reader of all three of the aforementioned genres, I’ve noted some problematic patterns throughout the Y.A. literature scene’s books and their movie counterparts. Today’s blog post is about the “White Until Proven Otherwise” pattern.
White Until Proven Otherwise
The White Until Proven Otherwise Pattern (yes, WUPOP) seems to go a lil’ bit like this: Character A is described as having brown hair, brown eyes, and a gorgeous smile. Their race is never mentioned. Then BAM! Another character, Character B is introduced. She’s got dark skin, kinky hair, and luscious lips...a character of color.
To be clear, I don’t have a problem with racially ambiguous characters. Racially ambiguous people exist in real life and should be represented in the media. My problem is that when a character’s race or skin color is never or infrequently mentioned in a book, readers (and future casting directors!) tend to default to the assumption that that character is Caucasian. I do it, and I’m Black. But why is this?
Well, just like other media, books (yes, even ones about space travel in the farthest reach of the universe) tend to reflect the author, and by extension, society’s social framework. In the United States, white is often the default. Especially to those within the race, whiteness is seen as culture-less, colorless, and the norm. Anything deviating from whiteness is perceived as “other”.
So in books, authors probably don’t feel the need to specify that a character is white. They unconsciously are aware of the fact that if a character is a person of color, they’ll need to make that clear through description, where as that’s not the case with Caucasian characters.
Confused? Here’s one example (of many):
My Journey with Black Hermione
“Black Hermione fan art”. Type those four words into a Pinterest search box and you’ll find gorgeous sketches and paintings of the quick-witted Harry Potter icon designed by fans in a heartbeat (unless your internet connection’s slow). Black Hermione reading a book. Black Hermione casting a spell. Black Hermione trying- and succeeding?- to pull her trademark frizzy hair into a ponytail. But type in just “Hermione fan art” and the results that pop up are generally more...vanilla.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sprawling J.K. Rowlingverse, Hermione Granger is a brilliant, brainy, and bookish young witch with large front teeth and frizzy brown hair. Born of non-magic, or “Muggle” parents, she is harassed at school on the basis of her parentage. Her primary offender, Draco Malfoy, is incessantly proud of of his all-wizarding family heritage (hmm, sounds like racism). Matter of fact, Hermione endures taunts of the pejorative term “Mudblood”, fights for the payment and fair treatment of a species of goblin-like bondsmen called house elves, and straightens her hair for the first big formal dance of the Harry Potter book series.
Now, as a young Black girl who collected facts and words as a hobby, designated the library as her favorite spot in school, had hair that I affectionately dubbed “The Bush”, and was discriminated against at school because of my race, Hermione...was white in my mind.
Reading through the blogs of other Black female writers, I discovered I wasn't the only little fan girl of color who'd visualized Hermione as white.
Hermione’s struggles and traits were so similar to ours… and yet because the author very infrequently specified her skin tone or race in the novels and always explicitly stated the skin color or race of characters of color like Angelina Johnson, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Cho Chang, explicitly, none of that mattered. It saddens me to think that as early as elementary school, I had already learned the rules of WUPOP, even if I didn’t have such a *read not* snappy name for it.
It came as no surprise to me that Hermione was played by the Caucasian actress Emma Watson in the movies. It wasn’t even something I really thought about. Watson played Hermione like she was born into the role and I still admire her portrayal of one of my favorite book characters ever. Still...
Noma Dumezweni as Hermione
When I heard that Noma Dumezweni, an Olivier Award winning Black British actress, would be playing adult Hermione in the London production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ( a play play that J.K. Rowling wrote about the lives of adult Harry Potter, his former classmates, and their children) I got this warm, bubbly feeling in my chest. By then, I'd started to realize the lack of representation; where were the bookworm Black girls, am I right? Most of the time, the Black girl characters I read about or watched on TV were sassy, obsessed with boys (and I mean more so than the other teenagers) and kept trying to find ways to avoid doing schoolwork. So when I heard that my favorite bookworm was going to be portrayed by a Black woman? You bet I was pumped.
Sadly, not everyone was thrilled. Many Caucasian fans took to Twitter to express their dismay/anger/disappointment/other negative emotions when the news about Dumezweni's casting came out. I looked through the tweets and saw messages along the lines of "What did they do to Hermione?" and "Not to be racist, but they've ruined Hermione." They argued that Hermione was WHITE, always had been WHITE, and thus it only made sense (you know, to preserve continuity) that she should be played by a WHITE actress.
Was WUPOP to blame? I think for some, maybe. Because of their white-is-default mindsets and J.K. Rowling's highly infrequent descriptions of Hermione's skin color, book Hermione was white for Caucasian fans. When Emma Watson played the bookish young witch in the movies, they'd been silently validated. But now, here was a Black woman playing their beloved Hermione Granger! While I follow the thought pattern (I think?) I don't believe or endorse it. Saying "Black Hermione is ludicrous and ruins the character" is racist, and J.K. Rowling said so herself via Twitter. Black does not equal less than.
Even if readers had been given more frequent skin descriptions that pointed to Hermione being light-skinned, that doesn't necessarily mean Hermione was white since Black people with fair skin do exist.
Furthermore, if it was truly about remaining true to the source material and keeping continuity, then where was the outrage when book fans realized that Emma Watson didn't have book Hermione's long front teeth before the spell that made them smaller? Or when Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played movie Harry, didn't have the same eye color and knobbly knees as book Harry? Where was the backlash when Lavender Brown, who was almost never described by her skin color in the books was played by a Black actress in the first few movies and then by a Caucasian actress in the movie where she becomes Ron's love interest? The "keeping continuity" argument simply doesn't hold up. Instead, it just reveals a double standard that is unfair to people of color.
How Do We End WUPOP?
We need to bring an end to WUPOP, because, honestly, WUPOP perpetuates the racist idea that whiteness is the norm and brown skin is “other”. This isn’t even just about hurt feelings. People, especially children and teens in their formative years, need to see positive representation of themselves in the media in order to build self-esteem and self-worth. What kind of message are we to sending children when we not only demonstrate in real life that they are “not the norm”, but bombard them with books, T.V. shows, comics, and movies in which those who look like them are marginalized, non-existent, or othered? (Hint, hint: not a great one.)
But how do we end WUPOP? My advice: Don’t shy away from describing your characters racially, from the darkest to the palest, in your writing. Be color-brave and explore authors who are actively color-brave in their stories, too!