This is difficult to answer because Harry Potter as a piece of children's literature is somewhat excellent and there's no denying that. It introduced many people, including myself, to read fiction and indulge in the weird fantasies of the world and adult realities. So I can't really hate on it too much.

But it destroyed many childhoods around the world.

Maybe that's a bit tough to swallow, especially since JK Rowling supposedly calls herself a progressive and tries to retroactively add "progressive" themes into the work. Making Dumbledore gay is one example and it came at an apex when people seek gay representation in fiction. It helps that Dumbledore is already a likable man and it won't amend the story if he was represented gay. There's also like a million studies about how Harry Potter encourages empathy and fights against racism or something like that.

But the thing is: it is an extremely reactionary work. If you read the work with British imperialism and postcolonialist theories in mind, you seriously go what the fuck Rowling are you a wolf in sheep's clothing. Giselle Liza Antol wrote about this beautiful piece on what she calls "ethic otherness" in Harry Potter (it was my first formal introduction to postcolonialist studies, way before I read Orientalism actually -- link: https://gwroadtrip.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/harry-potter-and-the-other.pdf) and she compares it to the so-called "multicultural" works of Richard Kipling. All that tolerance multicultural bullshit Rowling tries to pull off are banal and don't mean much in the end.

Minority characters are token characters to show a superficial multiculturalism. Hey, there's a Chinese person on the block. We're multicultural! Rachel Rostad has a wonderful poem about Cho Chang in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFPWwx96Kew -- I also recommend looking into Rostad's apology later over some misinformation (I honestly think she didn't do much wrong because wtf is Cho Chang as a name anyway) but also because she examines even more about portrayals of Asian women in media. You can also see this pretend multiculturalism in bizarre shit like the Japanese wizarding school of Mahoutokoro.

Despite being a book series that talks about race, classes, and all that shit, Harry Potter tries its best to avoid these issues and wrap it up in a blanket statement. It belongs to a class of works where they mention the social issue and then distance away from it enough that it doesn't have to make its readers (and the writer) face actual problems. The closest the book has ever done is talk about bureaucracy in the Order of the Phoenix (arguably Rowling's best book). Otherwise, it's shallow as fuck.

(And don't use the most children's literature are shallow shit excuse if you plan on making a counter response. There's a ton of children's literature that deals with real shit like suicide.)

These kinds of shallow approaches make it easy for readers and Rowling to argue that the series is a progressive, liberal work. Rowling likes to retroactively explain random shit like Remus Lupin's werewolf condition is an allegory for HIV (and this comes a week after a bizarre possible denial of Sirius Black being gay, so people thought this was a PR stunt). If she is indeed that interested in being progressive, she would probably rally against anti-gay people and not support them... Likewise, the Harry Potter series is merely a shallow allegory, not a real examination, of racism and it's so distanced from it anyway it might be better to find a needle in a haystack. At least, that needle exists and not just some symbolic image.

 I wouldn't care too much about the goddamn problems in Harry Potter. I love Casablanca and that is a notorious American propaganda. But Harry Potter is the vanguard for liberalism and forward thinking. I don't know how this became the de facto work for progressive thinking in children's literature, but it is. The politics only appear liberal, but they are contrived once you think about the "ethnic others" in these books. There are problems with how Rowling appropriates culture and how fans and writers see Potter (and a lot of mass media too) as anti-authoritarian progressive literature. It isn't. It's wishful thinking with rose-colored glasses.

But because nothing of this is questioned on a major scale, kids grew up thinking they're Harry Potters, Hermoine Grangers, and so on. Why not? Harry Potter is a multicultural hero. Frantz Fanon in Black Skins, White Masks says that black children "raised up normally" will be neurotic just because they keep reading white children's literature. They think they are white, but the minute they step into a Very Colonial society they know they are black. This causes the existentialist crisis he is concerned with. I had that experience myself when I moved to America thinking I'm some kind of Hermoine -- and then, I saw I was the "Asian nerd on the block". I'm sure there are others who saw themselves as Potter figures and then found themselves to be treated nothing more than a Death Eater.

These readings are dangerous and need to be discussed more. They do affect people living in the world who aren't good English speakers and it causes this weird inferiority complex -- no one of their cultures can write a masterpiece like Harry Potter. American, British, (and Japanese culture and South Korean culture to a certain extent in some places in Southeast Asia) become the only dominant and superior forms of cultures and we should all emulate it. It has a sting to it when we want to see ourselves as white like everyone else. White is the default color and the most neutral color. If one wants to be a Harry Potter or Hermoine Granger, they gotta be white and think white.

That's my postcolonialist rambling on Harry Potter. A fake progressive work that reveals itself to be a festering symptom of cultural imperialism. There are other perspectives to see Harry Potter and I don't think it is awful. As I said, it is a decent work if we think about the text and what it is successful on. However, it is also important that we have to read up other people's perspectives on the work. I know a few people who have talked to me about Potter who think my problems with the work are little compared to what works greatly or that I am too "critical" about the work.

I can't help but be critical about Harry Potter or any form of media. If there are problems, you gotta talk about it. No matter how small or large it is. That's how I engage with any media because I can't stand being other-ed.