[HPforGrownups] Re: Diversity in Literature & Media (WAS book differences)

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 40641

I've only just caught up with this thread.

I'm going to make a confession. Apart from Cho and the Patil girls (because 
of their names), Angelina who is stated to be black and Lee with his 
dreadlocks, I had never really imagined any of the other Hogwarts students 
not to be white. I'm sorry, but there it is. It reflects *my* school 
experience.
I haven't seen the CTMNBN for some time. How ethnically mixed did it portray 
Hogwarts to be?

Yes, Britain is a multi-racial society, but it is not uniformly multi-racial. 
Cindy's quite right in her assumption that by and large (not exclusively) by 
far the largest proportion of the black poulation is concentrated in towns, 
for many reasons: historical, cultural, economic. If my maths is correct, at 
the time of the '91 census, almost half the non-white population of Britain 
resided in London. There is a different pattern here from in the US as so 
many West Indian and Asian people came into the UK over a relatively short 
period in response to deliberate government policy and the need to find 
workers from the 1940's onwards. The jobs that they came over to do were not 
rural. In addition, there is a general population shift out of rural areas 
towards towns, anyway.

I went to a private school in Scotland. At that time there were no black 
pupils there.
Following that, I attended another private (semi-, it was Direct Grant, for 
Brits old enough to remember) school in Chester. Again, we had no black 
students whilst I was there.

At my children's school, here in Kent, I reckon that the number of non-white 
children out of a roll of about 300 must be in single figures. I live in a 
small town where it is highly unusual to see a black face. And we are near 
London.

Completely different from the health authority for which I worked in London, 
where there were over 40 different mother tongues spoken.

Now what about boarding schools?
Well, this is where irony strikes. You are actually quite likely to find 
non-whites in our boarding schools as for some time they have been dependent 
on a supply of overseas pupils to keep going. (This situation is changing a 
bit). 

But Hogwarts isn't just any old boarding school, is it? Its students are 
there because of their magical talent, which, I presume, is not 
race-specific. I don't think it's location in Scotland has any relevance, 
either. In other words, the proportion of non-white students there ought to 
reflect the make up of the British population as a whole.

The following information comes from the 1991 census and therefore correlates 
with the time of PS/COS. (Whether the wizarding population is included or not 
is a moot point!)
(http://www.irr.org.uk/resources/general.htm)

>There are just over 3 million black people in Britain (i.e. people who did 
not classify >themselves as white), making up about 5.5% of the population of 
55 million. 
>Black people make up 6.2% of the population of England, 1.5% of Wales and 
1.3% >of the population of Scotland. 
>In London, black people are one-fifth of the population. 
>Almost a half of all the black people here have been born in the UK. Only 1 
in 8 of >all black children under 16 were born abroad. 

Now there isn't a breakdown by age here, but using that 5.5%, as that's all I 
have, if Hogwarts *does* have 1000 pupils, then there should be about 55 
students from other racial groups.
Is this what we see? 
I reckon that out of the (?) 75 students of whom we know (I counted up the 
ones who appear in the Lexicon), we know or can imply that 7 are black or 
Asian. Quite a high proportion. More than 10%, in fact. So JKR didn't *need* 
to change anything to make Hogwarts probably more than adequately reflect the 
racial make-up of the UK, at least amongst the students to whom she draws our 
attention.. 

Which to me is intriguing in itself, as we are not just a multi-racial 
society, but a multi-cultural one.
The type of magic taught at Hogwarts seems to be firmly European in 
tradition, doesn't it?  Why should black wizards be expected to give up their 
own wizarding culture just because they live in the UK?

Eloise
    




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