The original post: /r/television by /u/Aggressive-Bowl5196 on 2025-08-28 00:48:15+00:00.
This will probably be downvoted but it isn’t about justifying the casting. I couldn’t care less about justifying Snape’s casting and I would have preferred he was book accurate.
However, as a black person(yes, really), I do not believe that a negative opinion of Snape would make the other characters look racist. Snape is not just despised for his physical appearance and “no other justifiable reason”. He gives as much as gets from the very beginning. He was immediately hateful towards Harry from the moment they meet. If a teacher immediately antagonized me as a child, I would strongly dislike him whether he was white, black, or brown. Why would I expect a white child to tolerate that treatment just because his mentally disturbed and creepy teacher was black? Also, Snape’s guilt is hardly an unfounded conspiracy by the trio. Snape is caught in compromising positions multiple time. The first book work hard to make you believe that it’s him so the twist is impactful.
As for Harry’s dad and his friends, I grew up in diverse neighborhoods and kids often bullied each other across racial lines for reasons that had nothing to do with race. Even as a child, Snape is weird, gross looking, anti-social, bitter, hateful, and mentally disturbed. It’s not racist to recognize those traits in a non-white child the same you would in a white child. Wizards in the HP universe don’t care about skin color, not even the wizard nazis. One of the most popular slytherins kids at school and one of Malfoy’s associates is a black kid named Blaise Zabini. It’s also likely that the marauders are a diverse friend group anyway.