I think this is a great point. It would have been awesome to have a POC main character in an HP film. This is true even though, as birds said, 'swarthy' is not really a positive descriptor, and not one I would use for a black person.
This is off topic, but I always think of 'swarthy' as the perfect description of all the men on my mother's side of the family. They're 'white', but 'ethnic' looking. My cousins and uncles all have dark olive skin and heavy 5-o'clock shadows by noon (think 'Brad Garrett' from Everybody Loves Raymond and you'll be pretty close). My grandpa looked almost *exactly* like Fred Flintstone. So mom's side of the family is very definitely on the dark end of 'white'. My dad is from scots-Irish stock, however, and I inherited my lily-white skin from him. So not swarthy. But one of my sisters takes after my mom and has darker skin and hair than me. Genetics is weird.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-05-17 08:00 pm (UTC)This is off topic, but I always think of 'swarthy' as the perfect description of all the men on my mother's side of the family. They're 'white', but 'ethnic' looking. My cousins and uncles all have dark olive skin and heavy 5-o'clock shadows by noon (think 'Brad Garrett' from Everybody Loves Raymond and you'll be pretty close). My grandpa looked almost *exactly* like Fred Flintstone. So mom's side of the family is very definitely on the dark end of 'white'. My dad is from scots-Irish stock, however, and I inherited my lily-white skin from him. So not swarthy. But one of my sisters takes after my mom and has darker skin and hair than me. Genetics is weird.