No subject

[rosie]

No: HPFGUIDX 40637

Pam wrote:
"I don't think there can be a Board of Governors or a School Board - they 
would surely have made themselves prominent to everyone with all the 
goings-on if they existed."

Have I misinterpreted you? I thought there was a board of governors - the ones that kicked Dumbledore out in CoS - with Lucius Malfoy as one of the governmors?

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Pip wrote:

"I'm in the East End of London. It would probably depend here on 
whether someone  was (to paraphrase the old joke) a Christian 
agnostic or a Jewish agnostic, a Muslim agnostic, a Hindu 
agnostic...I've certainly noticed people I know here who are not very 
involved in their (non-Christian) religious backgrounds not 
liking 'BC'."

Ah ok, maybe it's a regional/age difference. I'm near Nottingham, and most of the people I know well who practise different religions are in their teens. Having said that, most of the people I know who do profess that they are of a religion other than Christianity do practise that religion in quite an involved way. Um, I'm not making sense.

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Cindy wrote:

"As for whether the students come from London or not, the only thing 
I knew was that the school was *not* in London.  So that meant rural 
areas.  Rural areas that I (incorrectly) thought to be racially 
homogenous."

Um.. what about Harry, coming from Surrey? Was it just him, and the others had to go all the way to Kings Cross in order take a 4-hour train journey to the school that was right next door to their houses? 

Cindy said:
"As far as the areas you mentioned, I do have to smile.  I have *no 
idea* about the racial composition of West Ham, Kings Cross etc.  
Again, sad but true."

Um. I meant Kings Cross Station... and West Ham is a football team. All I meant by mentioning them was that, well, if London has so many places like Diagon/Knockturn Alley, Leaky Cauldron, Platform 9 3/4, one of the students supports a London football team, and Hogwarts is the only secondary school for Wizards/Witches in the UK....then it follows that London probably has a fairly large (relatively) magical population, and therefore young witches/wizards from London would go to Hogwarts. We also know that Harry came from Surrey, supporting the idea that they come from all over the UK.

Cindy:
"Seriously, it really isn't a scandal that I didn't know this 
information.  I mean, do Brits know the racial composition of Ward 3 
in Washington, D.C.?  How about the Richmond District in San 
Francisco?  I know the answers because I am intimately familiar with 
these areas.  I wouldn't expect someone who had only been a tourist 
in the U.S. for a few days to have any idea, and if their 
assumptions were wrong, I wouldn't hold it against them."

Yeh, but I wasn't talking about detailed knowledge of the equivalents of Hyson Green in Nottingham or the Moss Side in Manchester. I don't expect people who don't live here to know the "racial composition" of all the different areas of my home town. What I am talking about is the equivalent of thinking that all black people in America live in Harlem, and the rest of America is totally populated by white people wearing cowboy boots. 

Besides which, if I read a book set in this Ward 3, I'd probably go to a bit of effort to find out about the setting, like I do with the other books I read. 

"As far as Pavarti and Cho, I figured Cho was likely Asian.  Pavarti 
is a name I didn't recognize.  I didn't believe either was 
necessarily black, however."

So diversity is just having black people? Hogwarts would be monocultural if it had Irish, Asian/Chinese and Asian/Indian students, but not monocultural if it just had one black person in a sea of pale faces?

"Besides, you're not supposed to be *annoyed.*  You're supposed to 
smirk and roll your eyes at the so-called educated and reasonably 
well-traveled Americans who don't know *squat* about the world.  ;-)"

Damn, I thought that was just a stereotype...

"But your remarks clarifying the racial diversity in Scotland really 
don't undermine the central point that I was trying to make, which 
is this:  many, many Americans in the target audience for this book 
have *no clue* about the racial diversity of boarding schools in the 
U.K., and they might not pick up on it from reading the book if the 
book isn't explicit about it."

Would it cost that much to get up and find something out? 

Rosie



 
 



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