At uni I studied children’s literature and one of the texts was Peter Pan. I was talking about the violent racism in the text and how it was then reinforced by Disney, when a yt woman in my class interrupted and said “that’s why they did Pocahontas, to make up for the racism!”.

I guess I’m bringing this up in light of JKR new book. We studied Harry Potter in the same unit and the racism in that book is equally appalling. Perpetuating any stereotype is harmful, particularly when it’s entrenched in deep, deep racism. Hate is not a new concept for JKR.

As teachers, especially teachers of young people, we need to be critically examining any text we assign students - it’s not enough to just assign a recommended text because I have bad news about the people approving texts - they are predominantly white.

If our students are not seeing themselves in the texts we use, that’s problematic. But if our students are seeing themselves represented as racist tropes or stereotypes... that’s violence.

A text may have been your childhood favourite, that doesn’t mean it’s safe for other young people. Start reading texts, critically analysing and reflecting on both the attitudes of the book (and its author) but also how it reflects your own attitudes - that might be the problem.