The Color of Magic: Race & the Wizarding World
About this episode
Professor Julian Wamble explores the representation of Black characters in the Harry Potter series and the implications of race in a seemingly colorblind world.
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 rarely sits with: what does race actually mean in a world that insists it doesn't? From Angelina Johnson's under-examined arc as a Black woman Quidditch captain managing a volatile white protagonist, to Lee Jordan's belonging tethered entirely to his proximity to the Weasleys, to Kingsley Shacklebolt's frictionless institutional ascent, to Blaise Zabini's unsettling full investment in a purity hierarchy that mirrors the one that would exclude him in any other world, each character illuminates a different dimension of what it costs to exist in a space whose baseline was never you.
More episodes of Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
- Defense Against the What???
- Dean Thomas: We're Fighting Aren't We?
- Prof Responds: What's Missing from the Tale of Padma and Parvati Patil?
- The Double Disappearing Act of Parvati and Padma Patil
- Prof Responds- Cho Chang, the Rebel
- The Tale of the Three Hierarchies
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