Diversity in Literature & Media (WAS book differences)

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 40528

I've got to weigh in on this or I won't be able to get any work done
today.

I have to side with Cindy on this one, and not just because (a) I
think she's the cat's meow, and (b) I have a soft spot for deranged
people. ;-)

I do share Bernadette's impatience with people whose moral compasses
are set to "whichever cause is fashionable today."  They tend to be
annoying and wearysome and I'm not impressed by them in the least.

However, specifying Dean's race in the U.S. edition never struck me as
that kind of thing.  As it so happens, racial diversity is not a
fashionable cause or even a goal, it's a fact of life.  The British
Isles have welcomed plenty of immigrants from Africa, India, the
Middle East, and Asia; many families have been there for generations.
 It only makes sense that some of them would be wizards.

But I know that Bernadette's problem is not with the fact that Dean's
heritage is African, it's with the motivations of the publishers for
inserting the fact in the U.S. edition.

We don't know their motives.  They could have been motivated by
anything, such as

1) A desire to snag a wider demographic
2) A desire to avoid criticism
3) A desire to appear PC to their publishing friends
4) A desire to clarify for the American public what the British public
would already have understood (like changing "jumper" to "sweater")
5) A perverse desire to insert a FLINT at that point
6) A perverse desire to generate controversy (e.g. this thread)

Unless we were flies on the wall the day they decided to make the
change, we can't really accuse them of being PC or whatever. Besides,
as Cindy said, if they'd inserted the detail that he was tall, we'd
notice it and maybe complain about it, but we wouldn't really have
such a big problem with it. Frankly, I'm more annoyed that they left
out Sirius's vault number from the U.S. edition than anything, but I
don't accuse Scholastic of frivolous motives.

Given that most if not all the textual changes were "translations"
from British English to American English, let's just assume that this
one is another such clarification and have done with it.

--Dicentra, who warns all listies that Cindy is a master debater and
you will never win unless she concedes outright, which she won't
because she knows she's right