Agreed that Rowling says what she believes regardless of others, but she definitely could have handled the whole black Hermione thing better. She could have said something like "Hermione could be black. Her actions are what defines her, not the color of her skin." and most people
(i.e. not the people who think race is everything) would have agreed. Race was never a thing in the story, but Rowling was so disingenuous about the whole thing.
"I never said Hermione wasn't black." is disingenuous because not only there is a passage in the books saying
"Hermione's white face" (which, ok, could just mean "pale" as she was scared at that moment), Rowling personally picked the actors for the movies, every illustration in every cover of the books show the main characters as white and J.K. herself
drew the characters way back in 1999 with a clearly not black Hermione. Sure, she never
said Hermione wasn't black, but she showed the character as a white girl every time before the
theater theatre "controversy" and was pretty ok with that.
That being said, I agree with her that Hermione could be black because it changes nothing in the story and the people who were losing their shit over that are retãrded. In the end the whole thing was a stupid controversy about a fucking Harry Potter play
that isn't canon and reads like a bad fanfic. The only thing that's somehow less important than that is the new Twilight book from Edward's point of view.