It's easy to name characters of color in theHarry Potter universe. There's Harry's first love, Cho Chang; the trio's classmates Padma and Parvati Patil and Dean Thomas; the Weasley twins' best friend Lee Jordan, and so on. But if you actually pay close attention to the movies, you'll realize that these characters hardly speak at all. Every Single Word, a project that edits movies down to jump cuts of the only lines written for peopleof color, analyzed theHarry Potter seriesand found dismal results.
The film series, which iscomprisedof eight movies, is 1,207 minutes long, but racial minorities only speak for 5minutes and 40 seconds total. That's atiny slice of the series — 0.47 percent, or less than half of 1percent. There are only 12 non-whitecharacters (played by 13 actors) throughout the entire series.
Some ardentHP fans were upset by these depressing stats, arguing that the United Kingdom was not very diverse during the 1990s, when the books take place, and so the mostly-white casting is historically accurate.
But Dylan Marron, the man behind Every Single Word, explained to BuzzFeed, "If we are making leaps to believe in magic, spells, potions, a train platform that exists only if you disappear into a brick pillar, wands, a sorting hat, dragons, Horcruxes, and Quidditch, then we can make the leap to believe that a person of colour could be part of such a story."
Diverse casting is crucial for two reasons: first, it's important for all fans to be able to recognize pieces of themselves in the movies, TV shows, books, and music that feeds their soul; second, a lack of diverse characters means that actors of color have a harder time landing roles.
Inspite of the racial disparities,Marron says he still considers himself anHPfan.
"I love the series and I'm not hyperbolising when I say that I think the books have made the world a better place," hesaid.
The series celebrates diversity in so many other ways. J.K. Rowling wrote lovingly about characters from all walks of life — people who aregay (Dumbledore), physically different(Hagrid),poor (Ron), or evenborn to Muggle parents (Hermione) or non-magical Squibs (Filch). Tolerance and love are central themes to theHP series, which is why this is even more surprising — but not when you look at it in context.
HP isn't an anomaly when it comes to its inclusionof people of color. This problem is reflective of the film industry as a whole. In a study of the 100 most popular films of2014, 73.1 percent of all speaking or named characters were white.
Marron's goal isn't to call out any one film or series for being racist, but rather to shine a spotlight on the racist tendencies of the industry as a whole.
"I'm not saying that any of these films are racist," he told the Washington Post."I'm not saying that any of these filmmakers are racist. I'm saying that the system that they're contributing has some deeply racist practices."
If only there was aWizarding spell that could magically fix these deeply-rooted prejudices.Accio diversity, right?
Hannah Orenstein is the author of several novels, including Meant to Be Mine (out June 7, 2022), Head Over Heels, Love at First Like, and Playing with Matches. She's also the Deputy Editor of Dating at Elite Daily. She lives in Brooklyn.
