What is Hermione Granger's ethnicity?

Question

In all of the Potter books, there appears to be only one reference to Hermione's skin colour:

They were there, both of them, sitting outside Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor — Ron looking incredibly freckly, Hermione very brown, both waving frantically at him.
_{^{Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 4: The Leaky Cauldron}}

While it would be easy to assume that JKR meant that she's tanned (e.g. from the sun), other writers have suggested that the line above, and lack of other descriptors strongly implies that Hermione is naturally dark-skinned. Zeba Blay, the 'Voices Culture Writer' for Huffington Post even goes so far as to say that it's down to individual readers to make their own judgement on the issue.

"So is the fictional character actually white? Perhaps that's a determination readers should make for themselves." - _{^{Italics and bolding mine}}

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Is there any evidence either way? Has JKR ever given an in-universe reason to assume that Hermione is white, black or mixed-race?

Answer 1

Stuff and nonsense. Why would you need to remark on Hermione's "very brown" skin if that was its normal shade? This is very clearly saying that both Ron and Hermione have been spending more time in the sun than they usually do; in Ron, it comes out as freckles, and in Hermione, it manifests as a tan.

Add in the book covers (by the time the later books, and especially the reissues, came out, JKR had enough clout to veto anything that was blatantly wrong) and the movie casting (for which we know JKR had input), and it's clear that people are trying to "read into" this one quote things that are definitely not there.

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_{Word of God is now on record as saying Hermione's race was not specified, but in that case, the quote in question doesn't really make sense: unless we all acquire Mr. Data's observing capabilities, we wouldn't be able to tell whether Ms. Dumezweni spent her vacation deep underground in a cave vs. on a sunny beach. I think Ms. Rowling had a white girl in mind for Hermione while writing the books -- hence the allusions to turning pink, looking pale, and resembling a panda --, but she realizes that casting a play or movie is about more than physical descriptions. Remember that the original productions of Romeo & Juliet had a boy playing Juliet.}

Answer 2

Although not exactly evidence, Rowling has done occasional sketches of her characters, all of which portray Hermione as having light skin:

• In 1999, she did a sketch of her main characters, but I don't know the story behind it:

  

• She released a sketch of a scene from Philosopher's Stone on her website in 2004 (archived by the HP Lexicon):

  

  The fifth character, on the far right, is presumably an early version of the character who would become Dean Thomas; Pottermore reveals that a character named "Gary Thomas" was one of the Original Forty Hogwarts students created by Rowling, later renamed "Dean." Since we know that Dean is dark-skinned, and he appears dark(er)-skinned in the sketch, it stands to reason that Hermione was intended to be light-skinned¹.

Unfortunately, none of this tells us if she was meant to be mixed-race or not.

Obviously I'm reaching a bit here, and how canonical these drawings are is a matter of personal taste. Nevertheless, it gives some insight into Rowling's mind when she created the character, and I've found no evidence to suggest she changed it.

It's also potentially worth pointing out that there are abundant examples of Hermione being described as "looking pale" throughout the books. Again, though, this isn't evidence of much; the examples are always in high-stress situations, and a pale complexion in those sorts of situations has little-to-nothing to do with skin colour.

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¹ Hat-tip to Jason (no relation) in comments for nudging me in this direction

Answer 3

There are a few clues to Hermione's racial background;

Hermione is described (in Prison of Azkaban) as having a 'white face'

‘One moment, please, Macnair,’ came Dumbledore’s voice. ‘You need to sign, too.’ The footsteps stopped. Harry heaved on the rope. Buckbeak snapped his beak and walked a little faster.

Hermione’s white face was sticking out from behind a tree.

‘Harry, hurry!’ she mouthed.

_{^{Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 21: "Hermione's Secret"}}

Note, however that JKR has now gone on record as stating that this was not indicative of her race:

“I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.”

Hermione is drawn Caucasian

The US versions of the Harry Potter books had chapter illustrations that were hand-chosen by JKR. Although it's a little hard to see the detailing, in the pictures that contain Hermione, she certainly appears to be white/Caucasian. There's no substantial shading and her colouration appears to be the same as Ron's and Harry's.

Hermione is JKR

In various interviews, JKR has stated that Hermione is basically a Mary Sue character, essentially herself in fictional form:

Lydon: I was about to say 'are you Hermione?'

JKR: Yeah - w-well - n-n-not ... I mean none of the characters in the books are directly taken from life. Real people did inspire a few of them, but of course once they are on the page they become something completely different. But, yeah, Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11 - a real exaggeration, I wasn't that clever - Hermione is a border-line genius at points - and I hope I wasn't that annoying, because I would have deserved strangling; sometimes she is an incredible know-it-all.

It's by no means definitive, but it seems unlikely that someone portraying themself would change their race.

Answer 4

Hermione is repeatedly described in the books as having bushy brown hair.

Naturally dark skin typically goes with dark or downright black hair. Now while brown, of course, can range through a variety of shades, some of them quite dark, I think we can rely on Rowling's eloquence (so manifest on other occasions) to believe that, had she meant dark (or black) hair, she would have said so. For me at least, when hearing brown, the expectation is chestnut, not coffee.

Also, Hermione is in the habit of turning pink rather often.

"I love you, Hermione," said Ron, sinking back in his chair, rubbing his eyes wearily. Hermione turned faintly pink, but merely said, "Don't let Lavender hear you saying that."

[HBP, ch.20]

Oh well. A brown-haired girl who's in the habit of turning pink.

Answer 5

This is a panda:

This is a panda's description

The giant panda has a body shape typical of bears. It has black fur on its ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs, arms and shoulders. The rest of the animal's coat is white.

What did we learn? Pandas have white fur on their faces, and black fur around their eyes.

Here is a quote about Hermione from Half-Blood Prince.

Hermione emerged, coughing, out of the smoke, clutching the telescope and sporting a brilliantly purple black eye.

Here is a second quote moments later when Mrs. Weasley attempts to fix Hermione's eye.

Hermione sitting at the kitchen table in great agitation, while Mrs. Weasley tried to lessen her resemblance to half a panda.

Let's summarize

1. Pandas have white faces.

2. Pandas have black fur around their eyes.

3. Hermione has a black eye.

4. Hermione looks like half a panda.

Moral of the story, Hermione is white... or a panda.

panda link

Answer 6

Very brown is a British term for looking tanned after outdoor sports or a holiday. Ron looking "incredibly freckly" would mean as a redhead, he's very pale and doesn't tan at all.

Examples would be in real life, and I recall Enid Blyton's boarding school books referring to a sporty character looking brown after the summer hols.

'Hallo, Sally! How brown you are!'

Mary-Lou was at the deep end, watching the others. At least, she watched Darrell mostly, admiring the way she swam, cutting the water so cleanly with her strong brown arms, and thrusting through the waves like a small torpedo.

A pair of wicked eyes looked out of the window of a car, and a tuft of hair fell over a brown forehead. 'I may have!' said Betty, stepping out.

Mallory Towers series by Enid Blyton

Answer 7

I was having a discussion with a friend about this question, and he said something along the lines of this:

I too assumed that Hermione was white because of my prejudices.

I disagree: it's not prejudice that makes my friend think Hermione is white. Instead, I think my friend picked up on a number of subtle clues embedded into the text of Harry Potter. Rightly or wrongly, Western culture and the English language use a number of vague and unusual techniques to convey information about race. This is why, while JKR never explicitly states the race of many of her characters, we can infer the race of many of these characters by taking a close look at the language, or rather the lack of language, that she uses to describe these characters.

I previously claimed that JKR only specifies the race of non-white characters. I've done further research, and I know that is not true. I've found a number of examples where JKR does discuss the skin color of white characters. (I'll get to those examples in a second). However, I still stand by the following idea, which is going to inform the rest of my answer:

I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.

(Slate, A Whitewashed Earthsea)

Here's the claim that I'm going to spend the rest of my answer proving. JKR will specify the skin color of her characters only in a few specific circumstances:

1. If a character is a minority. This is because for most (almost all) minorities, skin color is an important part of their identity because it's the feature that the rest of society judges them by.
2. If a character is evil. One of the defining features of Voldemort is that he is deathly (almost unnaturally) pale. Many other characters who are (initially) associated with evil are also described in similar ways.
3. If there is a "biological reason" for describing a characters skin color, e.g. if a character is sick, scared, depressed, or (as quoted in the question) tanned from the sun. For example, when Tonks is depressed in The Half-Blood Prince, she is described as "pale". I would suspect that this is because being pale is a symptom of being sick.

In all other cases, when JKR does not describe the skin color of a character, it is because that character is white. Minorities in Western cultures do not have the privilege of ignoring their skin color; whites can go through their entire lives without thinking about the fact that they are white. This is because if you are white, you won't be systematically discriminated against because of the color of your skin; everyone else will be.

I can prove this by the fact that I only found one instance where a character was described as white, and none of the above reasons applied (see the bottom answer for a discussion about that). But I think it should also make sense that white characters don't think about or notice the fact that they are white. In fact, it's even awkward for people to say things like "my white friend" or "I'm white", even if those sentences are true.

In Learning To Be White: Money, Race and God in America, the theologian and college professor Thandeka describes an little social experiment she devised called The Race Game. The origins of this game were this: At a lunch together, a white member of the staff at Smith College asked Thandeka what it felt like to be black. Thandeka said that if her luncheon partner played The Race Game for one week, she would then answer the colleague’s question. The game consisted of one rule. For one week the woman was to “use the ascriptive term white” whenever she mentioned the names of “Euro-American cohorts. She must say, for instance, ‘my white husband, Phil,’ or ‘my white friend Julie,’ or ‘my lovely white child Jackie.’” The women never had lunch with Thandeka again. Over and over, when Thandeka presented the idea of The Race Game, white colleagues refused to do it. Thandeka remarks: “…in their [my white colleagues’] racial lexicon, their own racial group becomes the great unsaid.”

(Notes on Questioning Whiteness as a Literary Practice)

So for a number of reasons, both the fact that white characters don't need to think about their race and the fact that it's uncomfortable for white characters to think about their race, it makes sense that Hermione wouldn't be described as white, at least in the same way that other minority characters are described as black.

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In researching this answer, I literally searched through every book looking for references to characters skin color. I'm not going to include every quote I find because this answer would be too long. I also found one exception, which I've included at the bottom of the answer. Here are the results:

Minority Characters

"Thomas, Dean," a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table.

(Sorcerer's Stone)

'Yeah, I see what you mean, Remus,' said a bald black wizard standing furthest back - he had a deep, slow voice and wore a single gold hoop in his ear - 'he looks exactly like James.'

(Order of the Phoenix)

"Evil" Characters

[Voldemort] was standing in a dark, curtained room lit by a single branch of candles. His hands were clenched on the back of a chair in front of him. They were long-fingered and white as though they had not seen sunlight for years and looked like large, pale spiders against the dark velvet of the chair.

(Order of the Phoenix)

Harry twisted around, his own wand held high, and saw that the Death Eater had ripped off his mask and was pointing his wand directly at Harry, who recognised the long, pale, twisted face from the Daily Prophet: Antonin Dolohov, the wizard who had murdered the Prewetts.

(Order of the Phoenix)

And he threw the copy of The Quibbler to her. She caught it and stared down at the cover. Her pale, doughy face turned an ugly, patchy violet.

'When did you do this?' she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

'Last Hogsmeade weekend,' said Harry.

She looked up at him, incandescent with rage, the magazine shaking in her stubby fingers.

(Order of the Phoenix)

And from behind the six large figures before them came a seventh, smaller boy, smirking all over his pale, pointed face. It was Draco Malfoy.

(Chamber of Secrets)

Sick/Depressed/Scared Characters

A young witch with a pale, heart-shaped face and mousy brown hair was sitting at the table clutching a large mug between her hands.

"Hello, Professor," she said. " Wotcher, Harry."

"Hi, Tonks."

_{(This is in The Half-Blood Prince, when Tonks is feeling depressed because of Lupin. When they get engaged, Tonks is no longer described as Pale.)}

'Harry, dear, are you sure you're all right?' said Mrs Weasley in a worried voice, as they walked around the unkempt patch of grass in the middle of Grimmauld Place. 'You look ever so pale . . . are you sure you slept this morning? You go upstairs to bed right now and you can have a couple of hours of sleep before dinner, all right?'

(Order of the Phoenix)

Exceptions to my theory

"Well, well, well," said the Fat Lady, "Violet's just told me everything. Who's just been chosen as school champion, then?"

"Balderdash," said Harry dully.

"It most certainly isn't!" said the pale witch indignantly.

"No, no, Vi, it's the password," said the Fat Lady soothingly, and she swung forward on her hinges to let Harry into the common room.

(Goblet of Fire)

I'm not quite sure about this quote: if anyone has any ideas, let me know in the comments. I suspect this is because Violet is associated with alchohol (she drinks a lot with the Fat Lady), and her being described as pale might be because of that. However, I'm not 100% sure about that argument.

Answer 8

The non-US Deathly Hallows cover depicts her as light skinned, as does the "new" Scholastic cover, so one can easily assume that the quote in question is indeed indicating a tan.

Also, Jim Kay has done the illustrations for the new editions. The one of Hermione is featured on Pottermore, and Jim Kay's illustrations have received JKR's stamp of approval. At a minimum, then, we can assume that the last illustration is correct, and she is at least of white skin color, though we cannot definitely rule out mixed race.

Answer 9

According to JK Rowling, Hermione’s ethnicity is not definitively stated in canon.

Quoting her on Twitter:

@mauvedust: like. especially rowling. how does she feel about black hermione. i need to know.

Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione 😘

— @JK_Rowling on Twitter, 21 December 2015

This follows the announcement that Noma Dumezweni has just been cast as Hermione in the stage play The Cursed Child.

Just because she didn’t explicitly specify an ethnicity doesn’t mean she didn’t have one in mind. She’s made comparisons between Hermione and herself at a young age. I think it’s likely she had a white Hermione in mind when she wrote the books, which might explain some of the wording choices – but was careful never to pin it down entirely.

Answer 10

I just got the new illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (US Edition), and Hermione appears to be Caucasian:

Here's the new book:

Answer 11

1. Mixed race people do not always have dark or black hair
2. JKR herself said in an interview that Emma Watson looked just like Hermione, only more beautiful. I think that's pretty definitive. Also, wouldn't she have mentioned it at some point if people were wrong?

Answer 12

Considering her name, the fact that the only place where she is referred to as brown is when she returned from a place that is sunnier than usual, and the fact that she lives in Britain, and thus the default assumption would be Anglo-Saxon, I would say by far the most likely answer is that it referred to a tan.

Wikipedia's list of people named Hermione contains 9 people described variously as English or British, and 1 (from 110 AD) who lived in Rome, and whose father was white.

Of those 9, 6 have pictures on the Wikipedia article and are white, 1 has a link to IMDb with pictures showing they are white. The others are a Baroness and a President at Oxford college. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume they are white too.

In fiction, Hermione's are generally British/English, with a smattering of Italians and one person from Ancient Greek Mythology.

Turning now to Granger, there are too many people on Wikipedia for me to go through 1 by 1, but they are predominantly British/English, the American 2nd most common (of the 5 I clicked on, 4 were white and one was Native American), or French/Australian/New Zealander/Canadian (I clicked on 5 that were all white). There are, however, 1 each from Guyana, Trinidad/Tobago, and the Caribbean.

Looking at fiction, then every character with the last name of Granger listed in Wikipedia is white, with one exception, of a character in the anime Beyblade, where the character has a Japanese name in the Japanese version, and a 'Western' name with surname Granger for the English translation.

So in reality, a person named Hermione Granger is most likely white, but in fiction, the probability of someone named Hermione Granger not being white becomes vanishingly small.

Answer 13

From Chapter 8 - "The Quidditch World Cup" of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:

Mr. Malfoy's eyes had returned to Hermione, who went slightly pink, but stared determinedly back at him.

Skins high on melanin don't go pink. She was brown (in quote of your question) because of high UV ray exposure issue or other health issue.

Answer 14

Concerning your specific quote, I'd say she just had a nice tan as she had just come back from a holiday in France:

Dear Harry,

Ron wrote to me and told me about his phone call to your Uncle Vernon. I do hope you’re all right.

I’m on holiday in France at the moment and I didn’t know how I was going to send this to you – what if they’d opened it at Customs? – but then Hedwig turned up! [...]

(The Prisoner of Azkaban)

In The Order of the Phoenix, Hermione says to Hagrid she's been to Dijon on a holiday:

I was headin' fer where Olympes school is, 'cause we knew we was bein' tailed by someone from the Ministry. We had to go slow, 'cause I'm not really's'posed ter use magic an' we knew the Ministry'd be lookin' fer a reason ter run us in. But we managed ter give the berk tailin' us the slip round abou' Dee-John —'

'Ooooh, Dijon?' said Hermione excitedly. 'I've been there on holiday, did you see -?'

(The Order of the Phoenix)

While Dijon is not particularly warm or sunny during the summer, you're only a few hours from lots of beaches on the south coast of France.

Answer 15

Below is a picture of the 3 people that will be playing Harry, Hermione and Ron in the stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

^{The people who will be playing Harry, Hermione and Ron in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.}

The woman playing Hermione is actress Noma Dumezweni. She was born in Swaziland to South African parents, before moving to England as a child.

This casting announcement has been confirmed by Pottermore, in which J K Rowling states;

"I’m so excited with the choice of casting for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I can’t wait to see Jamie, Noma and Paul bring the adult Harry, Hermione and Ron to life on stage next summer."

Thanks to the fact that there is nothing in the text of the books (by which I mean a definitive mention of Hermione's race) to support a hypothesis either way, we can conclude that;

• In the films, Hermione is canonically white, having been played by actress Emma Watson.
• In the stage play, she is canonically black, being played by actress Noma Dumezweni.
• In the books, J K Rowling does not specify a skin colour for Hermione that cannot be interpreted as a demonstration of emotion. Her delight at both Emma Watson and Noma Dumezweni playing Hermione would seem to indicate that she simply doesn't care about this aspect of Hermione's character.

Answer 16

In the junior novelization of Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, Hermione's mother is described as having green eyes and pale skin. This provides fair evidence that Hermione is at least half-Caucasian.

Answer 17

This is one of the early official covers of Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban book:

The girl behind Harry on Buckbeck is definitely Hermione as per story. You can clearly see that she is white.

Answer 18

As other users have provided plenty of evidence for the ethnicity/race of Hermione, I want to talk about the snippet that prompted this question and explain a different interpretation.

I think a more accurate interpretation of this snippet would be that this is a description of the most prominent feature. For Ron, his most prominent feature is the Weasley freckled skin and red hair. For Hermione, that is her ample bush of brown hair on her head. So for Ron, he's labeled by the freckles on his skin, while Hermione is labeled by her brown hair.

And yes, Weasleys are known for their freckles, as mentioned by Draco Malfoy in Philosopher's stone (not sure what chapter, if anyone knows, feel free to edit):

No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles and more children than they can afford.

Answer 19

Has JKR ever given an in-universe reason to assume that Hermione is white, black or mixed-race?

No.

There are many answers here but most of them, in my eyes, do not answer the question, and I feel there should be a definite, no-nonsense answer here.

Let me mention a few things that should be obvious:

1. The films are obviously not canon. They differ from the books in countless places.
2. The illustrations are not canon. I have no idea why anyone would think they are.
3. Non-white people become tanned just like everybody else. Certainly people who are not black may become more "brown" in the sun.
4. Non-white people can be pale, or "white-faced". Obviously it does not mean literally "white" - nor would it mean so if it were about a white person.
5. Non-white people can blush, or look 'pink'.

Why is it that when Hermione's face is described as "brown" everyone here says "Oh, if she were a brown person, there would be no need to mention this", but when it's described as "white", they say "Ah-hah! She is white!"?

If anything, Rowling has confirmed that The Cursed Child is canon, so this is a confirmation that Hermione being black is canon. Personally, I don't consider The Cursed Child to be canon (for completely different reasons), so I don't think Hermione is "canonically" black.

To be honest, I would guess Rowling imagined Hermione to be white, like herself, but just thought it was not important. But I also find it mind boggling that everyone glosses over the fact Harry has blue eyes in the films, which is directly contradictory to the canon, but can't get over the fact Hermione is black in the play, which is not.

One last point, which is perhaps not relevant: the options are not "white, black or mixed-race". There are "races" which are neither white nor black.