Harry Potter: 10 Characters Of Color Who Deserved More

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling had recently been in the news for comments she has made about the transgender community. But, along with these controversies, many fans have also been talking about other issues with the Harry Potter series.

While the series might have felt progressive for the time period, many fans feel that the books fall short on diversity in many ways, and this is especially true for the representation of people of color. While there are characters of color in the series, they are mostly supporting characters, and many deserve more.

10 Yusaf Kama

While Yusaf Kama isn’t a character in the original Harry Potter books, he was introduced in the Fantastic Beasts film. He was a French-African wizard. Unfortunately, he’s just a minor character, and he’s also basically a villain.

His role is motivated by vengeance, and he swears an Unbreakable Vow to kill a child. Having one of the few Black people in the series as a villain wasn’t a great look.

9 Angelina Johnson

Angelina Johnson is a rather likable and interesting character who goes to school at the same time as Harry. She is a little older than him, but we learn about her as she is a Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

She even became captain of the team. Eventually, she married George Weasley. However, despite the awesome potential this character had, she was a small side character. There’s no reason why she couldn’t have been featured more.

8 The Patil Twins

Parvati and Padma Patil were twins who were known to have Indian heritage. While Parvati was sorted into Gryffindor, Padma was sorted into Ravenclaw. While Padma wasn’t featured much since she wasn’t around Harry, Parvati was in many classes with him.

However, she’s mostly presented as a bit vain and as someone who likes to gossip with her friend Lavender Brown. The worst thing, however, was how these two were treated rather rudely by Harry and Ron at the Yule Ball. Parvati should have had a bigger and better role.

7 Blaise Zabini

Blaise Zabini is a Slytherin who is introduced in the sixth Harry Potter book as he runs with Draco Malfoy’s crowd. He was a Black person who was known for being incredibly good-looking and quite vain.

While it’s not that people of color can’t be villains in the story, it’s a bit troubling that one of the few Black students is in Slytherin and known for being rather bigoted against Muggles and Muggle-borns.

6 Leta Lestrange

Leta Lestrange is another character who didn’t exist in the books who was introduced in the Fantastic Beasts films. Played by Zoe Kravitz, this character could have been the chance to have an interesting, well-rounded character of color take a hero role.

While she might technically die a hero, the fact that she died is quite problematic. Having one of the few more main characters of color sacrifice herself to save two white men wasn’t good.

5 Kingsley Shacklebolt

Kingsley Shacklebolt is a powerful Auror and skilled wizard who worked within the Muggle ministry while also being a member of the Order of the Phoenix. While he was a cool character, he was sadly just a side character that fans never learned much about.

He seems to be of African descent, but there was never any information about where he was from or his backstory. It seems like he was just tokenized in many ways to show racial diversity in the wizarding world without exploring it in a real way.

4 Lee Jordan

Lee Jordan is another student that Harry knew at school. He was older than Harry and best friends with Fred and George, but he sadly never got nearly as much attention in the books. While he was also hilarious and loved to joke around and participate in pranks with the twins, he was portrayed almost as their sidekick.

Lee Jordan could have been a character who got many more scenes and backstory, and he could have been placed on more equal footing with Fred and Geroge.

3 Dean Thomas

Dean Thomas is another Black character who only had a very minor role in the series. While he was in Harry’s year at Hogwarts and also a fellow Gryffindor, he was never super close to Harry.

Instead of using the opportunity to give Harry a close friend who wasn’t white, he mainly just became Harry’s rival when Harry started to have a crush on Ginny.

2 Cho Chang

Many fans have pointed out that Cho Chang’s name in and of itself seems problematic as it is a mix of two names from completely different Asian cultures. Other fans have even said that the name feels like a stereotype in and of itself.

Cho was a smart, pretty, popular student, but for some reason, she was written as an overemotional, disloyal person once Harry realized he wasn’t ready to date her. She definitely deserves more.

1 Nagini

While there are many characters from the series, including Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts movies, who deserved a more central role and better representation, one of the most problematic of all was Nagini. While fans knew Nagini as a literal snake that Voldemort kept as a pet and turned into a Horcrux.

Then, for some strange and horrible reason, in the Fantastic Beasts movies, it was revealed that she used to be an actual human woman. Fans were rightly outraged at this decision and by the fact that one of the few Asian characters in the series was turned into a literal animal and servant of Voldemort.

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