While I'm not a big fan of the HP books or movies, after putting on my racial thinking cap, I found a few things that left a sour taste in my mouth. Professor Slughorn shows a clear aversion for Muggles, like Hermione; while Slughorn is clearly not posed as a role model, the movie never satisfactorily resolves this particular unsavory characteristic of his. Although there is an interracial relationship in the story, between Ginny and a little-seen boy, it's oddly framed by a protracted conversation about Ginny's fair skin. Lastly, there is incessant and unnecessary swooning over men in this film -- not racial, but still quite annoying.
— Cindy Von Quednow

Though I haven't read, and will never read, the Harry Potter books, I can always tell with scenes in the movies are making a token gesture back to the source. You know what I mean: "Harry, what do you think about that girl?" "Which one?" "That one in the background, who doesn't have any lines. Anyway, let's go rescue a cup or something." I assume that, in the books, Background Student #580 is a compelling and fleshed-out character, and perhaps the book-readers in the audience can project that onto her 28 frames of silent celluloid. The rest of us only get to see tokenism -- an afterthought of casting, to offset the uniform pastiness of our foregrounded heros and villains as they clash over the fate of the genetically impure. Classy stuff.

And as if that weren't bad enough, these diminished characters are hella fine! The girl from the café who asks Harry out -- daaamn! What's-her-face, whose love potions get more screen time than she does -- why the hell does she need love potions? The guy on the train with Malfoy, whose entire performance consists of a single stifled snicker -- introduce us, you blond-ass emo wiz-racist! And Cho Chang! Cho Chang, whom Harry was getting on with so well in the last movie, to the point where she had lines, and who is completely absent from this one... how did Harry blow that? Is this the series end's big reveal -- that Harry is a moron?

Unlike the recent Star Trek movie, which gave its characters of color lines but no roles, the Harry Potter film series gives its POCs neither lines nor roles, and gives us no compelling reasons for banishing such, um, talented actors to the Azkaban of Perpetual Set-Dressing.
— Channing Kennedy

A major effort in this film was to establish a large number of dating scenarios within the (supposedly) 15-16 year old set. Among the starring cast, all are longingly thwarted from being involved with each other's very white selves, but the other students are not so constrained.

As the Hogwarts student body takes tiny steps towards looking somewhat like the population of London, it's interesting to see that the only prejudice existing is the one some have towards the mundane-born; other than that, we're visiting a deeply post-racial fantasy. I won't totally dismiss this, as i am reminded of my high school writing teacher saying: If you want to make your point, show it, don't say it.
— Darlene Pagano

The Harry Potter franchise follows along the same lines as many Hollywood movies – one ordinary person with superhuman powers swoops in to save the rest of humanity from imminent destruction. There is a feel-good factor to this ubiquitous movie plot line. All this type of democracy requires from you is to pay your $15 for a movie, popcorn, and soda and sit back while someone else rescues the world.

It sounds a lot like American politics, where the electorate is supposed to vote, maybe once every one, two or four years, and then our elected officials will take care of the rest. In Andrea Batista Schlesinger's new book The Death of Why, she points out that most Americans don’t pay attention to what their politicians actually do after they vote.

In typical Hollywood filmgoer fashion, the American electorate waits for its politicians to save the day. The politicians are helped along by the story we are told in the mainstream media that the most intractable problems have already been solved (racism, structural inequality) and the real pressing problems cannot be solved (shark attacks or serial killers).
I'm not sure why the other students at Hogwarts and the rest of London or the world for that matter are never enlisted to Harry Potter's grand fights of good against evil. But the lesson is not to sit back and wait to be enlisted while our politicians continue to make a mess of the economy and the planet. It's not time for Harry Potter or President Barack Obama to save us. Like the old civil rights saying goes, "we are the ones we’ve been waiting for."
— Debayani Kar