Race in HP

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Original Yahoo! HPFG Header:
No: HPFGUIDX C4811
From: catlady_de_los_angeles
Subject: Re: Race in HP
Reply To: [Yahoo! #4782] Race in HP
Date: 7/21/00 5:55 pm  (ET)

> Always before, I had been under the impression that for the most part,
Hogwarts was a school with little diversity (set apart from muggles
and wizards...)

I had the contrary reaction when I first read SS. I wondered if JKR
had been careful to put in so much 'ethnic diversity' for the sake of
political correctness.

> it describes Lee Jordan (the twin's friend) as having dreadlocks
(yes yes, I know white boys can have dreadlocks, too)

Altho' at that time I visualised Lee as a white boy with dreadlocks,
a phrase in GoF states that he is black. I did notice that Dean Thomas
is black and somehow got the idea that he has a West Indian accent. I
didn't know that Angelina Johnson is black until GoF said so.

I did notice the Patil twins, a stereotypically common Indian name,
and Cho Chang, a very Chinese sounding name (so where is Nga Nguyen?).

My assumption is that all wizard children living on the island of Britain
(and the island of Ireland, according that JKR interview with Simon Mayo,
thanks to whoever posted it) are invited to Hogwarts, and some of them
were born to Muggle immigrant families. If they joined the wizarding world
and married a wizard or witch, they would have wizard-born children who
would add to diversity of colors and surnames of the wizarding community.

I had thought that Seamus Finnigan was also the child of immigrants, that
his parents (or just his father) had moved from Ireland to Britain. That
wouldn't prevent him rooting for Ireland!!!

Twice now (it's only once every four years) several men at my job brought
little TVs into work to watch World Cup (soccer) matches. NONE of them
rooted for USA despite mostly being US citizens: Rosario rooted for
Mexico, Cambyse rooted for Iran.