Wizard-Muggle Marriages / and the children's race and culture

[Rita Winston]

No: HPFGUIDX 33777

I haven't forgotten that HPfGU main list has a one post per day limit.
I've just decided that because I couldn't post on Monday or Tuesday or
Wednesday because I was sick, or on Thursday or Friday because as soon
as I got well, Tim came down with the same thing, I could count some of
today's posts as being from Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday
or Friday.

Hey, RICHARD SLIWA, I am a female who has read a couple of James Bond
books. Do I need to prove that by mentioning that one was about having
an affair with a Russian girl who told he looked like Hoagy Carmichael?
And another about being rescued from drowning by archaic Japanese
fishermen and having amnesia and marrying their daughter and assuming
that because he's white, he must be Russian, so setting out to hitchhike
to Vladivostok in hope someone there will know who he is. Who is Mills &
Boon?

Tabouli asked, of wizard-Muggle marriages:
<< how on earth do they meet? >>

I think there are three explanations: 1) Muggle-born wizards would
continue to associate with their Muggle relatives and friends, and might
marry one of them, 2) the wizard close friends of the Muggle-born wizard
would come along to meet the Muggle friends and relatives, and might
marry one of them, 3) SOME wizards hang out in the Muggle world so
competently that they pass as Muggles. We just haven't seen them doing
so in canon yet. There have been some posts about wizards who even have
paid jobs in the Muggle world. 


Tabouli wrote:
<< because people from different cultures are operating by different
"rules" of behaviour.>>

and J Chutney replied:
<< All of the kids at Hogwarts are presumable British born (we know
there are wizarding schools all over the world). This leads one to
believe that even though Cho is ethnically Chinese, or the Patels are
ethnically Indian, that all the children at Hogwarts were born and bred
in the UK. So "culturally", these kids act "British". Fred and Angelina
undoubtedly have MUCH MUCH more in common than Fred and Fleur. >>

I wrote a reply and then found that J Chutney's was much better written
than mine. However, mine had some nitpicking about students being
Muggle-born or wizard-born. There is some evidence hinting that the
Patils are wizard-born and none hinting that they are Muggle-born. It is
entirely possible that the Patil parents (whether wizard or Muggle) were
immigrants to Britain. In which case, they would have raised their
children in a mixture of Britain around them (a wizard subset of Britain
if they were wizards, a South Asian immigrant subset of Britain if they
were Muggles) and their own South Asian culture. This is really
Tabouli's department!

The parents, even the grand-parents, also could have been wizard-born in
Britain. After that many generations, even if all the people were
'racially' South Asian, the family's culture, in which the children were
raised, IS British Wizarding Culture. So they would have MORE in common
with Ron and Draco than Harry or Justin Finch-Fletchley does.

We don't know whether Angelina is Muggle-born or wizard-born; we don't
know if Cho is Muggle-born or wizard-born; IIRC the only student whom we
KNOW to be both minority and Muggle-born is Dean Thomas.