:: shrugs ::
The thread’s not all about me. I don’t intend to watch the movies, but I don’t care if y’all want to talk about them.
There was one black kid in Slytherin - Blaise something or other, whose family had connections with Voldemort, or were at least sympathizers of the movement.
Her mother’s half Spanish, and half French Jewish. Maybe that’s what you were thinking of? Not the same thing, but…
IIRC, that line about Dean’s race was present in Rowling’s manuscript but was cut from the UK version. I remember reading on her website (which has since been redesigned, and I’m not sure if this content is still there) that when the book was originally published she was under pressure to make it shorter and a number of minor details were cut. The book was so successful in the UK that she was able to restore some of these cuts to the US edition.
Blaise Zambini. He was mentioned in passing as a Slytherin student in some of the earlier books, but wasn’t actually described until Half-Blood Prince.
As a British book, they should. Indian/Pakistani is the largest non-white minority in the UK, so they’re basically the analogue of “African-American”, inasmuch as there is an analogue, which is debatable.
The UK, in general, is much much “whiter” in ethnicity than America. I wouldn’t be surprised if Americans in general found an unusual dearth of non-white characters - it seems to me to be pretty reflective of the demographics of Britain.
Zabini. No m.
But her hair was made fun of when she was captain of the quidditch team. I think it was someone on the Slytherin team that said something like “why would anyone want to look like they had a head full of worms”.
Yeah, I don’t know.
Half-Spanish is partway to Spanish, and Spanish has some Moor blood…
No. I have no idea what I was thinking. She just looks exotic, I guess.
exactly this. the whole mudblood vs pureblood deal is the potterverse’s version of racism and prejudice. race is more or less irrelevant in that world. as mentioned above, there are many instances of interracial couples, and it’s never commented on, even by the bad guys. voldemort and his following persecute the muggle born wizards, and non humans, such as the goblins and to an extent fenrir grayback, who is a werewolf(and a death eater, but a lower ranking one).
and yes, dean thomas, lee jordan, kingsley shacklebolt, angelina johnson,and blaise zabini are all described as black in the text.
there’s been a thread about the lavender brown thing before, but IIRC i think some random background extra was named as being her in the earlier films, and they recast her for half blood prince when her role was expanded. i’m fairly certain lavender’s appearance is never described in the books.
And Luke Youngblood, the actor who played Lee Jordan, now plays the character “Magnitude” on Community.
Pop pop!
Cite?
I don’t have numbers, but my impression after having lived several places in each of those countries is rather the opposite. Britain may not have such a high proportion of people of (ultimately) African extraction (although there are quite a good proportion of West Indians, who are quite as black as American blacks), and fewer East Asians, but it has *a lot *more south Asians.
There probably are a smaller proportion of “students of color” (ones that we know about, anyway) at Hogwarts than you would find at the average British school, but I think this is more to do with a class imbalance in than a racial one. There do not seem to be any any working class students there (the Weasleys, despite being described as poor, really are not) and people of color (no doubt due to structural racism) tend to be concentrated in the poorer strata of society. As a representation of the racial mix you might find in a school for middle to upper class students (especially a private boarding school, which is what it is), Hogwarts is probably about right.
Perhaps it is realistic that there would not be any really poor wizards, because, you know, magic! (Frankly I don’t get how they are not all living like millionaires.)
If Wikipedia is accurate then the population of the US is about 72% white, while the UK is more than 90% white. The US figures are cited as being from 2011 and the UK figures as being from 2001 so things may have changed a bit in the UK since then, but I doubt their population is less than 72% white now.
The UK stats are split up by ethnicity while the US lumps everyone into broader racial categories, but adding up all the South and East Asians in the UK table I get 4.7%, which is about the same as the figure (4.8%) given for all Asians Americans in the US. So while I can easily believe there are far more South Asians in the UK, there must be far fewer East Asians. Black Caribbeans are listed as 1% of the UK population, half the total black population of the UK. The US is more than 12% black.
And it very much depends on where you live. You’ll see a lot more black faces on the streets of London than you will in Inverness.
A subtle but important point is that Harry Potter dated Cho Chang before dating Ginny Weasley, while she dated Dean Thomas before she dated Harry. I think that Rowling deliberately did this to show that both of them had no concern with the race of the people they would date, since Cho was Asian and Dean was black. Rowling never explicitly mentions this point, but I think it was quite deliberate.
Zabini was black and was described as such in HBP. He also holds a lot of pureblood views.
Another fun fact- George Harris and fellow Harry Potter actor Michael Gambon play vicious drug dealers in the very excellent film Layercake.
It’s been years since I read the books, so I can’t remember, but are the white characters explicitly described as being white? I mean, if it doesn’t actually say they’re white because it’s not important to the story, then they really could be any ethnicity. Of course, it doesn’t have to refer to them as “white”, there could be words like “pale complexion” and such that would mean the same thing.
The Mudblood thing didn’t seem so much a matter of race but an “old-money” vs. “new-money” distinction that matters only to snobs like Malfoy. Sometimes it has racial undertones, but having an antagonist with that attitude is standard fare for boarding school literature, which usually comprises of wealthy students.
Right now I’m reading a short story that takes place at a boarding school where one of the wealthy kids picks on the scholarship student.
IIRC Luna was described as being pale. Maybe Draco too. Other characters were described as having hair or eye colors that would be uncommon for a non-white person, e.g. the Weasleys are all redheads.
There are also characters that are presumably non-white but who I don’t think are ever explicitly described as such, they just have names that indicate a non-European background. I don’t think it’s ever actually stated that Cho Chang is of East Asian descent or the Patil twins of South Asian descent.
I’ve heard others say basically the same thing, that they took it as more an allegory for class than race, but the repeated references to blood and the importance some characters place on the “purity” of blood strikes me as having a lot more in common with racism.
Well it is an allegory of racism but she could have been less subtle about it. She was not obvious at all. What with the Muggleborn registration commission, blood status, people being rounded up for being muggleborn, Grindelwald, Nuremgrad, Dumbledore defeating him in 1945, one could easily miss that.:rolleyes: