From TVTropes, on why “But Voldemort and the Lestranges are evil so it makes sense that they would enslave WoC” is a terrible argument against those who criticize JKR’s tone-deaf use of racist tropes
From my understanding, Misaimed Fandom is when the fans of a work take the opposite or otherwise differing interpretation of what the author/creator intended. One of the examples I\'ve always used is Walter White from Breaking Bad being a violent sociopath who by the end of the show is pretty much dealing drugs because it makes him feel powerful, but fans still love him anyway. (Do please correct me if I\'m wrong).
That\'s not quite what\'s going on here, and it\'s a little more complicated than I think mixtape3022 is understanding it.
\"These people are reading into the subtext and declaring racism.\" - No, they aren\'t. They\'re pointing out problematic tropes that have been employed in the past or have otherwise Unfortunate Implications. Racism can be implicit or explicit, and in this case it\'s the former. It\'s not as simple as \"ehrrrrmergerd RACISM\".
\"I highly doubt that a person who wrote novels condemning bigotry and supremacy intended her work to be viewed this way.\" - This is essentially the equivalent of saying \"I can\'t be racist, I have Black friends\", and I hope I don\'t have to explain why this is wrong. I haven\'t seen a single person who thinks that J. K. Rowling sat down to write a racist screenplay, or that she intended for all this backlash against something she clearly loves very much. What people are saying is that, despite her best efforts, the tropes she produced in her work were racist. That\'s not to say that she\'s a horrible person who should never write again, only that she should maybe do more research into these kinds of things, or think about the implications. Characters of colour - or of any minority - have stereotypes attached to them, stereotypes that are harmful, and that\'s what makes them difficult to write. For the record, I love Rowling, her books, and her as a person, and I truly think she\'s committed to diversity and representation. I just think she missed the mark here.
Onto the examples themselves. You said that people were upset that a Korean woman was cast as Nagini, and that they\'re wrong because the movie presents this as a bad thing, and that she wasn\'t caged because of her race. Which is all very well and good - except people weren\'t complaining about her being Korean exactly, and absolutely nobody thinks Nagini was caged because of her race. I don\'t even know where you got that from. The problem is that one of the few women of colour in a franchise that has been historically bad at them has her destiny tied to two villainous white men. She will then lose control of her own body, turn into a snake forever, and serve a genocidal monster for the rest of her life - until she is murdered by Neville Longbottom, who in the chronology of the book releases, has retroactively murdered a human woman who may or may not have had a choice in her predicament.
Rowling\'s problems with characters of colour have been noted - there are barely any, especially women of colour. Cho Chang\'s nationality is never confirmed, and she basically disappears after Harry dumps her. The Parvati twins also stop being important at some point, and Angelina Johnson is only important because she married a Weasley. So the idea that Nagini\'s purpose - again, despite Rowling\'s intentions - is to serve Wizard Hitler and then die are pretty bad enough. But since Nagini is now a person Horcrux, like Harry, it throws the original books into Unfortunate Implications because while the narrative acknowledges Harry\'s personhood and it\'s driven home how bad it is to make a person a Soul Jar, Nagini is treated like a just pet. We don\'t even know how she gets to that point yet. Does she have any agency, or any choice in what she\'s doing? If she doesn\'t, it\'s bad enough, but if she does, even if she is cursed, why does she stay with Voldemort? And even then, the problem is with Rowling, the producers, and the casting people seeing nothing wrong with a Korean woman being Wizard Hitler\'s pet for the rest of her life.
Then you said that people were complaining about Leta being a child of rape and were saying it was racist, even though it wasn\'t a statement on her race. You\'re right, it wasn\'t, but again, that\'s not what people were complaining about. They were complaining because a powerful white man raping a black woman after stealing her from her helpless black family simply because he was sexually attracted to her has very, very harmful links to slavery, because slavemasters did that to their slaves all the time. There is simply no way to sugarcoat that. And that\'s before the \"Tragic Mulatto\" trope, which Leta Lestrange is a perfect example of. Her father raped her mother but he didn\'t love Leta herself, people at school bullied her for being a Lestrange, she did something that got Newt thrown out of Hogwarts, so everyone in present-day except her fiance also hates her, her other half-brother hates her too, and then she sacrifices herself to save everyone and \"atone\" for her sins. She doesn\'t belong anywhere - Grindelwald even says this in the movie! - so she dies.
Nobody thinks Rowling was promoting racism, but these tropes are problematic. It\'s not Misaimed Fandom because Rowling\'s views and intentions aren\'t really the point here, so we\'re not misinterpreting them. The plot points are not bad things in of themselves, they\'re bad because of context, the history of women of colour in her works, and the wider implications of representation. I don\'t think we should have them up there because it\'s a little silly to say \"these fans are complaining about nothing\", but then later on down the page say \"actually here\'s proof of what they were complaining about\" in the Unfortunate Implications bit. The characters aren\'t racist, I don\'t feel Rowling is racist, but these tropes are.
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