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tearblossom · 4 hours ago

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Aight, time for my Black Snape rant

To preface, I'm a black African woman. I'm saying this so certain white warriors on this site don't sort me into one of their culture war teams.

I've had a very frustrating time with fandom when it comes to black characters. Mostly in the Stranger Things, Spiderverse, Hunger Games, Arcane and Harry Potter fandoms. It's not unique to fandom let alone fandom on tumblr, and that's part of what makes it all so frustrating. The reason these stupid fights regarding black or brown characters is so fucking omnipresent is because fandom is frankly a product of how audiences (especially in the US) consume media.

To summarize: you guys are racist as fuck. Like so racist as a culture it's insane. And the eternal American-exceptionalism that goes on here paired with the white supremacy frankly makes it such a fucking nightmare.

And I'm saying this as frankly as possible. The discourse around this, no matter what side you take, is so white it's unserious.

When it comes to the Paapa Essiedu as Snape thing, fandom has divided itself into two camps. The so-called racists and the so-called anti-racists. The racists are the ones who think that a black man has no business playing a white role and that this is a DEI stunt and "Adam Driver would've been perfect" is one of their favourite refrains. The anti-racists think that anyone who has a problem or makes a big deal out of this casting choice is racist. They say shit like "he's an accomplished actor and was probably chosen because of his skill." Fundamentally, this other side insists it's "no big deal."

I think both these sides miss the point because they're coming from a very white-centric mindset.

I'm going to attempt to rectify that.

Rant #1. This Shit Is Humiliating

I recall a scene in Severance S2, where Milchick, manager of the Macrodata Floor, gets rewarded by the higher-ups with a painting of Kier, the company's founder (and a WHITE! man), as black. They did it so that Milchick, a black man "could see himself in Kier." Milchick, though he doesn't say much, looks visibly hurt by this.

Because it assumes that Milchick is SO DIFFERENT from every other worker in Kier--even Kier himself--that they are not relating to each other on a human level. The Kier company, Lumon, does not see him as a fellow human being.

I'm sure some black people got excited over black Ariel or black Snape. And that's their prerogative. But I find this shit humiliating. And fans that keep going "Oh, it's so nice that a black man is getting a big role," really rub salt into the wound. Why? Because the role is frankly a hand-me-down.

Apparently, your society is so fucking racist that it's so common for you to cast black people in white roles because you don't watch movies or shows with original black characters. Let's be honest. You rarely even read books with black protagonists, even if they're from YOUR country. You deem anything with a black lead to be "for black people." Black and brown people are so inhuman to you that you think the only way for them to be relatable to a general audience is as a previously white character. You straight up can't relate to them on shared human experiences.

Because black and brown people can't be conceptualized as JUST PEOPLE to you without them being generic/white (in short, when their ethnic markers are literally only skin deep). When they're playing an established white character.

Which means you end up treating blackness as something easily subsumed by whiteness. Whiteness is universal. Anyone can be white, hence any one can be a white character. Whiteness is the only way to be human and relatable to other human beings. Your idea of advancing the humanization of black people in media portrayals is "extending whiteness" to them rather than CENTERING them or giving them their own individuality, agency or stories.

It's humiliating because we have so many cool black characters in the books. Angelina Johnson is a quidditch chaser, basically the "striker" of her team! Blaise Zabini is a rich, arrogant, black aristocrat that's good at quidditch and potions (and also a blood-supremacist)! Lee Jordan is a charismatic goofball that told jokes on the radio during the war! Dean Thomas is a tall, good-looking half-blood who dated Ginny, went on the run with two goblins and two wizards, hung out with Luna at Bill and Fleur's cottage, escaped Malfoy Manor and fought in the Battle of Hogwarts among many other things. Kingsley Shaklebolt is a powerful Auror in the Ministry who's also part of the Order! Very rarely does fandom (much like the movies) ever expand on these characters in a meaningful way when they have so much going for them. So much variety and range.

And they're given NOTHING. Because their originality as black characters is uninteresting to you.

But just wait. Once the show comes out, there'll be black Snape fanarts all over the fucking place. And those other black characters--Dean, Blaise, Angelina, Lee, Kingsley--will feature as frequently as they did before when the first movies came out. Which is barely.

It's also an annoying thing authors like JKR and Susan Collins do, where they code, describe and show their characters to be white (like Hermione or Lenore Dove) and then shrug their shoulders and say "I don't mind if they're portrayed by black actors." Why do they think they're being honourable? It baffles me. If you'd wanted Hermione or Lenore Dove to be black YOU WOULD HAVE WRITTEN THEM AS SUCH. Write more EXPLICITLY BLACK AND BROWN CHARACTERS instead of congratulating yourself on being so "progressive" and "inclusive" with your nonchalance at different castings while these actresses get abused till kingdom-come for it. I mean, Blaise wasn't even described as black IN the books which is why his actor got so much hate once he was cast in the movie and JKR had to mention his blackness in an interview. Frustrating as fuck! Like why do these people think it's great enough that a black person is being cast in a role they OBVIOUSLY were never meant for? Why do the authors keep pussy-footing around decisions THEY MADE while their audiences rip these people apart? You picked their names, wrote their physical descriptions, backstory and history--DELIBERATELY! Like it's so OBVIOUS how misplaced Paapa is. It's so painfully obvious he doesn't belong in that role, skill or no. Because JK Rowling in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS described him as WHITE, PALE, PASTY. He was an archetype in Gothic literature. His physical attributes were as part of his character as they were the story and overall atmosphere. He was the Head of Slytherin House, meaning he worked primarily in dark places out of the light.

I mean fuck me.

Aren't we just supposed to be so fucking honoured that white people deigned to give a black person one of their best roles? Isn't that such a sign of societal progress? Black people would just jump at a chance to play these same redundant white classic characters. What a privilege! We all want to be white, after all. Isn't it just great when someone's blackness is so inconsequential, we can just shove them anywhere with no significant change or ramifications to anything? When black and brown people are so ornamental, we can just throw them anywhere with no rhyme or reason to how they got there? It's not like black and brown people have any history, variety, nationalities and ethnicities and important cultural signifiers or anything, right?

Rant #2: The Ethnic Erasure

I'm going to drag the Harry as Desi thing here because it's relevant. What fucking Desi person has a last name called "Potter"? Hmm? White people loooovvveeee Desi Harry and James Potter apparently. Do they, really? Aside from a smattering of Harry wearing vaguely Desi-related robes to the Yule Ball in fanarts, where does this Desi-ness come in? Is it in his family dynamics? Are there any cultural reasons he was called Harry and not something like "Ishan"? How is it the Patils who are ACTUALLY Desi still get FUCKALL in fandom? Since you just crave more Desi characters, apparently.

For those who actually look at the Harry Potter books as an intentional work written by a woman who, I don't know, sat down, planned, wrote and edited these books for YEARS, you know the significance of names in her world-building.

Pure-blood aristocrats have very Greek/Roman names (like the Malfoys and the Blacks). This is deliberate, since heritage is important to these families, it makes sense that their names are call-backs to great European empires of the past. Other half-blood or muggle characters likewise have names suited to the demographics they are a part of, which is accurate to UK demographics in the 90s. Seamus has an Irish name because he's Irish. Dean, Lee and Angelina all have names you can find among the black UK populace. Kingsley's last name is clearly made up, much like Weasley and Skeeter, but they're outliers. But note how most of these characters names are tied to a certain kind of HISTORY. (Blaise is most likely a descendant of black Moors, some of whom held prominence in European societies between the 8th and 17th centuries and were Christianized given that he comes from Old Money.) These names are significant to plenty pure-blood families, many of who make up the Death Eaters.

Now most black people in the UK live in London (and if you know anything about the evolution of accents and slang in this area, you know this is true), but there's a marginal presence of black people in the UK Midlands as well, where Cokeworth--Rowling's fictional town and where Snape lived--might be located. So Spinner's End wouldn't give us much to oppose when it came to Snape's background (although I do have my separate qualms with it which I'll rant about later).

The name Tobias could belong to a black man, but Snape is so niche to Old English, it's frankly impossible that a poor black man in the UK would have such a particular name. Even then, "Eileen," Snape's mother's name, is unquestionably Celtic. It is clear that Eileen Prince's name is meant to convey her status as a pure-blood British witch, and she passes this prestige on to her son (or alludes to it) by naming him "Severus," a Roman name. So sure, you can have black British people called Eileen, Tobias or Prince, given that historically, black people in the UK would have names from all over (Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic), but these names are SPECIFICALLY meant to signify European ancestry in the story. Explicitly white European ancestry, in the context of a pure-blood supremacist wizarding society.

What would a black woman called Eileen refer back to the good old days of European conquest for???? Why would she find it important to name her son "Severus"?? And we know both Eileen and Tobias must be black and West-African to produce a son as dark as Paapa. So please. Explain to me why a black, West-African woman from such a prestigious wizarding family would name her son "Severus."

In short, Snape could be black (unlikely, but possible), but there's no good reason why he should be, and that's part of the problem because . . .

Rant #3: It Makes The Story Worse

One of the consequences of treating ethnicity as ornamental in stories is that you end up sounding like an idiotic asshole.

Everyone else in the entire cast for this show gets book-accurate casting (except for the actor for Seamus' actor being dark-haired and apparently the new Hermione is too tan for some people).

Why is Snape such an exception?

Let's look at the full optics, shall we? Black Snape is bullied by a gang of white kids as a child. So Snape is not BULLIED because he's friends with Lily and James is jealous of that. He's not bullied because he's smarter than everyone in his class or fond of the Dark Arts. He's not bullied because he's weird and off-putting and unattractive. He's not bullied because he's poor. In short, he's not bullied as Snape for being Snape.

It's because he's black.

Now this is a story about racism as opposed to prejudice and blood politics. It kills the worldbuilding and kills Snape's character by making the focus (his blackness in sharp contrast to his white counterparts--so far at least) his skin colour. Skin colour was NEVER a factor in the wizarding world. Like omg.

Not only does this miscast force racial politics on this story (a story that's already deconstructing prejudice in many forms), it adds similar problems to the dynamic between Snape and Harry. And if this casting is an attempt by well-meaning whites to make people understand that "black people aren't inherently bad or dangerous and look how wrong this white Harry kid was to think so," congratu-fucking-lations on the most unnecessary, overdone elementary school lesson ever. Now, it's not about Harry learning to empathize and see the complexity in people. It's about him overcoming his own internal biases against black people.

This is why I get annoyed by the shoulder-shrugging anti-racist crowd when it comes to this discourse. They keep insisting that Paapa's blackness is inconsequential and IT'S NOT. It's significant to the story and the political dynamics within the story and with audiences. You can't just randomly "black" or "brown" characters. Making Voldemort black would be significant. Making the Weasleys or Malfoys black would be significant. The same way making the Potters Desi would mean they wouldn't be the fucking Potters. It ALL MATTERS BECAUSE BLACK AND BROWN PEOPLE HAVE THEIR OWN FUCKING HISTORIES AND IDENTITIES OUTSIDE OF WHITENESS AND CAN'T BE ASSUMED TO JUST "FIT IN" WITH STORIES NOT SHAPED FOR OR AROUND THEM AND IT IS DEHUMANIZING TO INSIST SO. WE ARE NOT SPICY WHITE AND OUR IDENTITES ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH WHITE ONES BECAUSE WE ARE PEOPLE INDEPENDENT OF WHITENESS.

In the case of Cynthia acting as Elphaba in Wicked, her blackness added more to the character's story and history. Elphaba is green-skinned, so there was also more flexibility there as well, especially since half the names there are made-up nonsense. It made sense because black features are still heavily demonized as ugly while blonde white women are the epitome of perfection. So the relation between Oz and the real world was not lost, especially because this story is American for mostly American audiences. Cynthia's blackness is not ornamental, it is USEFUL and RELEVEANT to the story.

Not so with Halle Bailey's Ariel or Paapa Essiedu's Snape or tumblr's "Ishan" Potter. In these contexts, they are mere imitation of whiteness, and I am not about to take that shit as a compliment.

Rant #4: The Optics Are REALLY Off

Okay, so let me get this straight. You saw Snape, a canonically unattractive, pasty, wiry, poor, greasy-haired weirdo and said "I know the perfect candidate for a film depiction of that! A black man!"

No, no, let's talk about this. Black features are considered ugly in the West and all the other places white supremacy has poisoned the world. So you either admit that you find Paapa ugly, hence fitting for the role, or handsome hence poorly-fitting. Either way, it's funny that every other character aligns somewhat with their book-counterparts, but the perfect casting for Snape is apparently a black man.

Okay man. Sure. Let's pretend this is a golden opportunity for Snape's character. It's just so revolutionary that the only character in the books we know came from the slums is cast as a black man. Because that's so novel, isn't it? So avante garde, you guys. Wow. A poor, ugly black man from the slums. This will change cinema.

Now how are you going to code him as homely and greasy? Are you going to give him dreadlocks (thus re-inforcing the stereotype of black hairstyles like dreads as filthy)? Are you going to give him a a straight-haired weave (thus forcing unnatural whiteness onto him)? Are you going to give him an afro or braids (thus making it unquestionably obvious in everyone's mind that this isn't Snape anymore)? Are you going to make him bald and short-haired (what happened to that long, oily hair)? Do you see how non-ornamental blackness is when it comes to characterization? If you are going to communicate "Snape," you have to communicate "white." If you are communicating "black" you seize to communicate "Snape."

Genuinely, how do y'all expect me to have faith that these people will know what to do with black Snape's hair? Do you honestly expect me to have faith that they'll know how to style it while avoiding all the racial stereotypes about black hair?

"Oh, but Alan Rickman was also too old to play Snape! He wasn't perfectly aligned with the books either." Okay. Did that have any ramifications for an entire ethnic group? Was he relentlessly bullied online for it?

BFFR.

Conclusion:

None of this would be happening if white fans in the West actually related to black characters outside of sexualizing or using them as shipping-fuel. I've seen how ignored Lucas Sinclair is in the fandom. I've seen how Miles, Hobie, Mel Medarda, and more get sexualized to hell or only shown in relation to their white love interests. I've seen how fandom "colours" more canonically aggressive or "dominant" characters like Harry instead of Draco, while white characters get to be complex and or "feminine." Or how black and brown characters are drawn or written to have bigger dicks, taller or larger sizes, while their white partners get to be individuals.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF MERLIN could you please stop calling everyone who doesn't like Paapa as Snape a racist because they want a book-accurate Snape? You're watering the term down to nothing.

None of this mess is erased because you don't call Paapa slurs online like the other side. You still don't read books with black people at the center. You still don't know how to decenter whiteness from everything. So your "activism" is just as ornamental as your conceptions of non-white ethnicities.

#harry potter hbo #severus snape

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