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.

Oh ffs, talk about trying to find an issue where there really isn’t one.

Maybe the Hermetisists should kick off about the cultural appropriation of the philosophers stone or the Greeks could burn copies of the books for nicking their story of Orpheus and renaming the mighty Cerebus Fluffy!

Christians could really kick off about so many things. 5 pointed stigmata (sorry lightning scar) born out of saving a child through the ultimate sacrifice borne out of love, a story of a child fulfilling a prophecy to save the righteous, a big final battle of good and evil.

Can’t be arsed to go on.

Actually in the best Stephen King fashion the saviours of the Harry Potter series are all misfits, people who society would seek to devalue.

You can accuse JK Rowling of being a Cultural magpie, but not a racist.

I did @PrincessConsuelaVaginaHammock, she lived in London in the early 90s. That was not what I was saying though, I was pointing out to the poster who claimed that the U.K. was not multicultural in the 90s that that is a crock of shit.

Which was me SiaPR, and you've misquoted: what I actually said was not very multicultural when the books were written and set. Which was correct. Look at the census statistics.

She had the idea in 1990, the most recent census data then when she conceived of the idea would've been 1981. However as she wrote in the 90s I'll use the 1991 census data. In this, slightly over 5% of the UK described themselves as non-white and nearly 95% as White British. Our society simply looked very different then to what it does now. It was not very multicultural.

Lastly, we should probably clarify our terms. She was living in London when she had the idea for the books and in Scotland when she wrote the first one.

FFS. What next, Winnie the Pooh and Moomins?

Just going to weight in as a massive Harry Potter book geek for whom the books have a very special place in my heart. Save for Kingsley Shacklebolt and Angelina Johnson who are described as black and Luna Lovegood, Dudley Dursley and Draco Malfoy who are described as pale/pink, at no point for any other character is the colour of their skin referenced. Any character could have any colour skin. I too read Hermione as black as a kid, I imagined Lee Jordan as black too, the films cast him as a black girl, in the books he is a boy but his skin coliur is not described. I also imagined Dean Thomas as black. J K Rowling very much left it up to the reader. The films came along and made lots of decisions (lots of bad ones in my opinion) that changed the way the characters were viewed. J K Rowling addresses diversity in the books not be neccessarily looking at race (it is a children's book) but in the story lines looking at the way that magical creatures (and muggles) are treated by wizards. Unfortuantlely these particular themes while prevalent in the books were largely ignored by the films. There is a whole theme in Goblet of Fire where Hermione creates a society to defend house elves. Who have been enslaved by wizards. IMHO JK Rowling tackles hard hitting themes in the context of the universe she created. I do not think the books are racist at all.

Erm... Lee Jordan is a boy in the movies too.

@PorpentiaScamander apologies, I really take issue with the films and the massive chinks of story they changed/missed out and havent watched them for a long time. I'm sure there is a character in the films who was changed to a girl. As I say I dont like them, I watched them when they first came put and havent seen them again, it wasn't Lee Jordan, might not be any character and I've misremembered. I think my main points still stand tho.

@PrincessConsuelaVaginaHammock

Which was me SiaPR, and you've misquoted: what I actually said was not very multicultural when the books were written and set. Which was correct. Look at the census statistics.

She had the idea in 1990, the most recent census data then when she conceived of the idea would've been 1981. However as she wrote in the 90s I'll use the 1991 census data. In this, slightly over 5% of the UK described themselves as non-white and nearly 95% as White British. Our society simply looked very different then to what it does now. It was not very multicultural.

Lastly, we should probably clarify our terms. She was living in London when she had the idea for the books and in Scotland when she wrote the first one.

Ah culture is determined by the colour of one’s skin. Righty-ho then.

[quote UnspeakableBode]@PorpentiaScamander apologies, I really take issue with the films and the massive chinks of story they changed/missed out and havent watched them for a long time. I'm sure there is a character in the films who was changed to a girl. As I say I dont like them, I watched them when they first came put and havent seen them again, it wasn't Lee Jordan, might not be any character and I've misremembered. I think my main points still stand tho.[/quote]
Oh me too! I saw the 7th film at the cinema and walked out saying "but what about... and they missed... I mean how can they just forget while chunks of the story..."
I think a lot of things that were Neville in the books were Hermione in the films.

I agree with your main point though. She tackles 'racism' among wizards/muggles/werewolves/house elves etc rather than black/white/chinese/etc

@PorpentiaScamander I think the biggest crime was what they did or rather didnt do with the house elves stories. In the film when Dobby dies it not such a big thing because he didnt really play a part.

I'm sure there is a character in the films who was changed to a girl
Blaise Zabini, I think (he is also black / mixed race in the canon, I think). But how could anyone think that Blaise is a female name, escapes me.

I still boo like a baby every time I see that scene though . There definitely is a lot more to house elves than what the movies show!

Blaise is also a boy in the films.
I can't think, off the top of my head, of any characters that swapped sexes between books and films. (Although there may well be one that I've forgotten) The only thing I can think of is Hermione taking on some of the things that were Neville, and possibly other boys in the books.

@PorpentiaScamander
In the later films, yes. In the earlier (based on class lists) I think he was cast as a girl. But this is off the top of my head, I am off to Google now. The majority of earlier fan fiction also for some reason considers Blaise to be a girl.

Ah culture is determined by the colour of one’s skin. Righty-ho then.

Thought you'd probably go down that road once some inconvenient stats and correction of your misquote were brought into it siapr. In a thread about JK being accused of racism due to writing few stated non-white characters, you're now claiming your point was that while Britain when the books were conceived and begun had a much lower percentage of non-white people than now, what you were actually discussing was the prevalence of different cultures amongst white British people in the 90s and you imagined this relevant to the conversation. Though not relevant enough to explicitly state until several posts in, obv.

No @PrincessConsuelaVaginaHammock, you said multicultural, you did not say non-white. Your comment is still inaccurate, Britain was very multicultural then.

@firstmentat you could be right. I haven't seen the films for a long time. I always thought he was male though.

@SiaPR

No *@PrincessConsuelaVaginaHammock*, you said multicultural, you did not say non-white. Your comment is still inaccurate, Britain was very multicultural then.

This is very clearly not what you meant when you first disagreed with it though, given what you wrote about 90s and in particular London. If you had simply disagreed with the use of the term multicultural because you don't want to conflate culture with ethnicity, you'd have said that, rather than making poor arguments getting basic facts wrong about when and where the books were written.

What happened is that you had an initial reaction to a post based at least partially on being wrong about when and where it was written. Basically you thought she was writing in late 90s London not early to mid 90s Portugal and Scotland. You misstated various facts in trying to dispute it, and you're only now attempting to pretend you never meant anything to do with skin colour, the actual topic of the thread, because you've nowhere else to go.

I always thought Blaise was male, but yes, many in early fandom thought female.

On the subject of early fandom, I've just remembered a then-boyfriend showing me an online furore over Cho Chang. Turned out some people (or one person and some trolls arguing for the sake of it?) had always imagined Cho Chang as white British and they were Very Upset Indeed when the films came out. White erasure, Political Correctness Gorn Mad and all that.

Years later I'm on a thread where people are arguing it too obviously points to her ethnicity. Times change, eh?

*her name too obviously points to her ethnicity.

@SiaPR - just out of interest, how old were you when HP was first published?

I always think of Blaise as being named for the male saint so never saw the character as female.

It's fascinating how different people have imagined characters so differently. Ive fallen into a harry Potter wormhole which happens far more than I would admit

I've also just found an interesting article which suggests Cho and Dudley may have married!

I think I thought of Cho Chang as Korean because she's a quidditch player and at the time I knew a very sporty Korean British teenager.

Funnily enough, said teenager actually had an incredibly Scottish first name and surname. We didn't live in Scotland. Almost like names and cultures aren't preserved in aspic and international travel and emigration happens. Who knew?