To clarify what I said earlier - race (quite long)

[rosie]

No: HPFGUIDX 40590

I know I'm not very good at expressing things, but I thought of an analogy to what I was saying earlier, that it was (to my mind) insulting to just describe someone as black and assume that we now have a mental picture of them, etc.

Imagine a book set in a totally black community (in the past, or something) - Situation 1. Now imagine that for some strange reason there is a white person who appears in the community (shipwrecked on their island, whatever). It would be worth pointing out that this person was white, as otherwise we would assume all the characters to be black from the setting, and this character's whiteness would be the most striking thing about them in the community.

If the book was about a community that was a mixture of different races (situation 2), it would not be that important to point out that a character was white (unless it was central to the plot), because we would assume there to be people from many different races anyway. Telling us someone is white doesn't really add much to the story in this case.

Now if we change "white" for "black" and "black" for "white" here:

Describing a character just as "black" only really makes sense in Situation 1 - where we should assume from the setting that all the other characters are white. In Britain, this is not the case (well, not in most communities), and it clearly isn't at Hogwarts. Doing this makes Hogwarts seem *more* monocultural because it implies that we are in Situation 1.

I know someone said that if someone was black, that would be the most striking thing about them in a Scottish boarding school... but it's not, is it? We know that there are characters from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds here, and JKR obviously doesn't have the narrow view of ethnic origins as "different colour" - we have the same sorts of name clues for Irish and (probably) Lancastrian characters as we do for ones of Indian descent. 

The Potterverse is obviously Situation 2 - a mix of different races, colours, origins, even kinds of diversity we don't have in the Muggle world (hags, giants, werewolves). 

It therefore doesn't add anything to the story if we just learn that a character is black, does it? The only way that information alone adds anything is if we are meant to assume from this that the character must fit certain stereotypes of black people; from my point of view, this is *not* desirable! 

I mean, with say Hermione, don't the bushy hair and the big teeth really add something to the haughty, geeky attitude she has? And if she didn't have those, we wouldn't be able to see her teeth shrink, her hair get smoothed for the Yule Ball, or her being teased by e.g. Snape. These physical descriptions *add* something to our knowledge and understanding of her character.

Take Harry. His floppy hair is important (like his dad; he's always getting told off by the Dursleys; the hair-regrowing incident), his green eyes (like his mum), his skinny frame (Aunt Marge's comments about him being runty, having bad parents; contrast with Dudley; comical effect of him having to wear Dudley's huge old clothes), his scar, etc, etc, etc.

Ron's distinctive red hair and freckles is important in his family, and some have suggested that the red hair might be an important clue for all sorts of theories later. 

Even Malfoy. His cold grey eyes (just like his dad's), don't they just scream "evil"? 

Do you see what I mean? Maybe some people read the descriptions just to picture the characters, but for me, they are helpful in understanding characters better, and in some cases various incidents depend on a character's physical appearance.

I know this is quite a long-winded way of explaining this idea, but I'm not good at doing this.

It wasn't obvious to *me* as a UK reader that he was black, but I didn't really think of him as being any colour in particular, just being Dean, and I reckon most kids probably wouldn't have inferred that either from the details we're given about him. Thus, it seems strange to me that it was inserted just to clarify for Americans who would not understand UK-specific clues, but I am happy to accept this. If it turns out later that it was really crucially important to the plot or to his character to insert for Americans that Dean Thomas was black, and/or the omission of this from the UK version was just a mistake that will be corrected in later editions, I will eat my hat, I promise.

It would be interesting to know what is said about the Sorting in foreign-language editions . Alexander, can you help?

I'm very sorry to anyone who has got offended by this topic, as I know anything to do with race is a sensitive issue, and I hope no one feels that I am trying to marginalise any group or the general idea of diversity. I also hope you managed to understand my confused way of explaining things.

Rosie









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