And yes, Blaise is the big Challenge to the "racism is magic-related" argument in HP. Not because of any of the characters see him as a Black English Wizard, but because it challenges the audience to see him as such, when previously maybe they saw him as of European descent, be it French or Italian or Swiss.
Personally, even now I see Blaise as a mixed-ethnicity character, where I saw Dean as English African even before meeting him in the movies. Blaise is more like the British Tiger Woods, where he's dark-skinned but you can see that his parentage is from more than one continent. Maybe an ancestor is British, and a paternal relative is probably Italian, but beyond that, it's all kinda nebulous. I've never written Blaise in fanfic, so I've never had to come up with a concrete description.
A few of my thoughts...
And yes, Blaise is the big Challenge to the "racism is magic-related" argument in HP. Not because of any of the characters see him as a Black English Wizard, but because it challenges the audience to see him as such, when previously maybe they saw him as of European descent, be it French or Italian or Swiss.
Personally, even now I see Blaise as a mixed-ethnicity character, where I saw Dean as English African even before meeting him in the movies. Blaise is more like the British Tiger Woods, where he's dark-skinned but you can see that his parentage is from more than one continent. Maybe an ancestor is British, and a paternal relative is probably Italian, but beyond that, it's all kinda nebulous. I've never written Blaise in fanfic, so I've never had to come up with a concrete description.