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11:37am December 22, 2013

How Lavender Brown Became White

cocobaby23:

Any Harry Potter fans out there?

Any?

Well, I am a HUGE fan. First off, let me say I am very happy about the diversity within the HP films (compared to other films in Hollywood), I really do appreciate it, but something has got me bothered.

Lavender Brown.

In case you don’t know, Lavender was originally black. In both the Chamber of Secrets and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Here are the two original actresses:

Kathleen Cauley (Chamber of Secrets)

image

Jennifer Smith (Prisoner of Azkaban)

image

Proof can be found on IMBD.Com, Wikipedia.com and Harry Potter Wiki.

But some how… we went from these two actresses to this:

image

Now don’t get me wrong. She did a wonderful job as Lavender. But, in the interest of continuity, why did she become white. And it begs to ask: what hell would have been raised if they had cast a black actress as Lavender in the Half Blood Prince?

What if half way through the films we suddenly made Hermoine black, or latina or asian? Shit would hit the fan. But make Lavender white? Nah, that’s not racist! Its just… an… actress change.

It is sad to see racism happening in HP films. Its disgusting that Jennifer Smith and Kathleen Cauley were ignored as potential Lavenders, something that has black women could have boosted their careers… or any person of color’s career in this role. Its like, we can’t have Ron Weasley be in love with a colored girl. We need a British woman to fit this role! She has to be British, so in their opinion, what is more British than a white woman? That is what I find the most saddening about this. They wanted to have an audience who could identify with Lavender as a British girl who was in love for the first time and head over heals, but it couldn’t be a black girl, because no one would identify with her enough. So they white washed the character, and tried to erase the roles of Jennifer Smith and Kathleen Cauley (try to look up pictures of them in relation to Lavender Brown, next to difficult, now look up Jessie Cave. Everywhere.)

Notes:
  1. itsophelia reblogged this from tumblrisweird
  2. spiralthorns reblogged this from tumblrisweird and added:
    Wow, I had no idea Lavender was supposed to be black. I don’t even remember what she looked like in movies 2 and 3....
  3. norsetree reblogged this from mcgarrygirl78
  4. dalekofchaos reblogged this from tumblrisweird
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  7. gws325fandom reblogged this from tumblrisweird
  8. born-of-the-sea reblogged this from tumblrisweird and added:
    What was so wrong with leaving her as is? I’m so pissed about this.
  9. temperamentalcunt reblogged this from tumblrisweird
  10. feministintrospectionexception reblogged this from tumblrisweird and added:
    Wow ok. That’s so awful. I am so mad.
  11. mmmeeoowww reblogged this from tumblrisweird
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