Benjamin Tinsley

“Far from destroying our most well-loved works of fiction, abandoning assumptions of the whiteness of our characters infinitely expands all of the fictional universes, whether it be the wizarding world or the Star Wars galaxy. As vlogger Rosianna Halse Rojas points out,10 reading Harry Potter’s Hermione as black is a whole different ball game. It brings to light the incredibly racialised language of blood purity used in the wizarding world, of mudbloods and purebloods. This is terminology that could have been easily lifted straight from Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. Hermione’s parents were muggles after all, and that is how states and scientists have categorised races and fuelled racism – as though some heritages are contagious and are spread through lineage and blood. A black or mixed-race Hermione enduring spat-out slurs of ‘mudblood’ from her peers, plucked from her parents, told she’s special and part of a different race altogether, might be very keen to assimilate, to be accepted. No wonder she tried so hard. No wonder she did her friends’ homework, and was first to raise her hand in class. She was the model minority. A black or mixed-race Hermione agitating to free house elves, after six or seven years of enduring racial slurs, might not have the courage to challenge her peers, and instead might have hung on to something she felt she really could change.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

“If we really and truly believe in our students, then we need to have the courage to talk to our colleagues about social justice issues and push the boundaries of our collective efficacy.”
― Mirko Chardin, Equity by Design: Delivering on the Power and Promise of UDL

“Schools often use Black students in this way in order to achieve racial reckoning on the cheap. They avoid bringing in teachers—or, in other settings, corporations avoid bringing in experts—to address gaps, holes, and areas of ignorance. And the burden for teaching falls on the few Black or Brown folk in the room or office, instead of being assumed by the white folk in those arenas in need of the reflection and change. It is all so utterly exhausting.”
― Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America