Racism in Harry Potter?

[tipsyandtim]

Moving away from the JK Rowling transgender comments that seem to have caused a lot of drama on Twitter, I’ve also seen a lot of discussion about the HP books themselves. Many are claiming that they’re inherently pretty racist for numerous reasons- main characters are all white, characters of other ethnicities are usually minor and seem like tokens and tend to have quite stereotypical names- ‘Cho Chang’ was trending on Twitter as an example of a racist name choice.

Wondered what everybody’s thoughts were? I don’t agree that the text shows JK as ‘incredibly racist’ which some are claiming but I think in hindsight she wouldn’t have made some of the character choices if she could write it again. I suppose a lot of content was planned and created about 25 years ago now and what seemed like adding diversity and representation is actually seen as badly thought-out now, even though I think she had well-meaning intentions.

Many are claiming that they’re inherently pretty racist for numerous reasons- main characters are all white, characters of other ethnicities are usually minor

That’s the case for many books. BAME authors and characters are very much under-represented in the publishing world - that’s a problem that certainly needs addressing. But I don’t think that makes an individual book without BAME main characters inherently racist. I think we do need to move forward and learn though and it’s certainly worth questioning - Hermione Granger is portrayed as black in The Cursed Child and J K Rowling may well have thought why she didn’t explicitly do that in the books. If I read the book again I would probably imagine her that way. As time moves on authors and publishers hopefully pick up on these kind if missed opportunities.

Thing is, people assume certain characters are a particular colour

No where is it mentioned that Hermione was white. It was assumed

Its a boarding school in the UK, a very large proportion of the children are going to be white.

And what name would you give an asian girl that people wouldn't imply was racist?

No where is it mentioned that Hermione was white. It was assumed

Funnily enough JKR even said this herself when the black actress was cast as Hermione.

On the other hand a lot of people assumed Lavendar Brown was black when they read the books even though her skin colour is never mentioned. There was certainly a bit of a stir when a white actress was cast as Lavendar in the sixth film .

I don't understand why Cho Chang is a racist name choice? Isn't representation (including names of various cultural origins) a good thing?

My agent asked me why I didn't write more black characters.

I asked her to point out to me where I mention any colour at all. I don't. Ever. Readers read the characters as they colour that they are, or assume they are all 'meant to be white' because I am.

I just never ever mention it, unless the character's ethnicity is part of their 'journey'. Banging on about a character being black or Asian simply to make the point that they are, is just as racist as never writing characters of colour at all, surely?

Colour isn't mentioned in the books is it? Hair colour yes, but not skin colour.

Cho Chang is a racist choice? How?

Jkr took care to mainly choose old-fashioned names that children nowadays we're unlikely to be named (e.g. Lee, Neville Colin, Hermione) to avoid associations for any children with the same name.
As most of the children with Chinese heritage that I know have "British" forenames rather than Chinese ones she probably thought she was on safer ground.
Re Padma and Parvati, only know one Padma (40+) and no Parvatis at all.

otoh
She had an adopted child
She had a whole family of redheads (who get picked on in real life)
She had an intelligent girl central to the storyline (rather than one who sat back and waited to be rescued)
She had a werewolf (who get discriminated against)

When I read the books to my sibling we imagined Hermione as black, his friends did too. The movies casting a white girl with curly hair actually made him not want to watch the movie because she was his favourite.

I would disagree as she tends to portray intolerance of differences using magical creatures such as house elves and centaurs, and also with wizards, half-blood and muggle-born rather than skin colour. Malfoy uses the slur "mudblood" which seems to be taken in a similar way to the n word in real life society.

Plus, she rarely states skin colour in her books: Hermione is traditionally portrayed by black actors in the Cursed child.

I guess you have a point with Cho Chang, Parvati Patil etc. but how else would you suggest she portrays diversity in a book with no pictures other than saying "she was of Chinese descent".

Is Lavender Brown supposed to be Black-Caribbean? The only Lavender I know of was from The Chalet School, so I assumed white tbh.

Angelina was black, she had long plaits and I think she was even explicitly described as black at one point. The Patel twins were Asian (Indian?), Cho was Chinese, Seamus was Irish, Anthony Goldstein was Jewish and Dumbledore was gay.

I know it's not perfect but she started writing these books in the 90s and that's pretty forward looking for the time.

Also, I think there were a couple of occasions where Hermione was described as "going white" because she was shocked or something, but Rowling clearly didn't think it mattered when a black actress was cast for Cursed Child.

The 2011 census noted increased non-whites in the U.K. (see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom) but the proportions then were:
7% Asian (Patel sisters and Cho are named characters where we know enough in the BOOKS to comment)
3% Black (Dean Thomas named in the books, I’m not sure if Kingsley Shaklebolt’s ethnicity is discussed or Blaize Zabini’s)
2% mixed and 1% other

Now I am not sure I can name 100 human Harry Potter characters...so the percentages seem not a million miles off to me.

Agree entirely that there is woeful under representation of positive BAME characters in children’s books but I’m not sure HP is particularly awful.

I’ve seen people say little effort has gone into her name, it sounds very close to ‘ching chong’ and that Cho isn’t even a Chinese first name so it’s sort of like she’s quickly thought up a ‘Chinese-sounding’ name without a lot of thought process.

I’ve some frankly ridiculous accusations though- one being that Seamus Finnigan obviously intentionally has the same initials as ‘Sinn Fein’ 🙄

Oh for goodness sake! I despair,clearly you have never even read the books.

Yes you being unreasonable.

Hermione experiences Mugleism.

Malloy and others champion pure bloods.

But yeah, JK Rowling must be a racist for calling a character Cho Chang.

Oh yes, I forgot about Shacklebolt.

are!

The thing about Hermione is - if JK had explicitly described her as black she would now be criticised as racist because of all the ‘mudblood’ abuse she gets. The people digging at JK are determined to criticise her. It’s irrelevant to them whether she actually does anything wrong.
There are a number of characters from ethnic minorities in the book - representative of Britain at the time she was writing.
Cho Chang was perhaps a misguided name though - one of the names is a Vietnamese surname and one a Chinese surname. I guess she could be of dual heritage and named for her mother’s surname though. She’s made up. Could be any ethnicity, really.

Cho and Chang are both surnames. Korean ones.

She could have done a lot better there let’s face it.

Isn’t there irony in suggesting the characters are all white, but at the same time Cho Chang is stereotypical/racist?! (Unless Cho Chang is a racist slur I don’t know about which is very possible).

Is Lavender Brown supposed to be Black-Caribbean?

We don't actually know because JKR never mentions her skin colour or any other aspect of her apperance in the book. A lot of people just imagined her to be black which I always found interesting.

Padma and Parvati are really common female Indian names. It’s one of the reasons why Harry Potter is so popular in India. Another point to make is that Harry could have been cast with an Indian or black actor with blue eyes too. And the Weasleys could have been half Irish half Middle Eastern and still have had red hair and freckles. The movies were a failure when it came to diverse casting but that wasn’t the book’s problem.