Dean Thomas (The wizarding world and empire)

[GulPlum <hp@plum.cream.org>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50765

Christian Stubø wrote:

> It is not a given that Dean Thomas' name reflects typical practice 
> in the wizarding world.  It has always been my assumption that Dean 
> Thomas is muggleborn (canon doesn't seem to actually say so, but 
> there are indications - being a Westham FC-fan, for instance), 

uh-oh. Favourite rarely-discussed topic alert! :-)

All we know about Dean's background is that "like Harry, he had grown 
up with Muggles" (CoS Ch. 14, "Cornelius Fudge", p. 187 UK Ed.). Note 
that it's NOT "like Hermione, he was Muggle-born". 

I have a pet theory that Dean Thomas's birth name was Dean Lestrange. 
I find it interesting that Dean is the ONLY one of Harry's classmates 
whose family background has not been described (and indeed one of the 
few whose parents we've not met or read about) to date. I can't fail 
to deduce that in best JKR fashion, this is therefore meaningful.

Given JKR's penchant for parallelism, we'd have him juxtaposed with 
Neville (son of "bad" parents in prison -v- son of "good" parents in 
hospital, plus the obvious element of the Lestranges being 
responsible for the Longbottoms being where they are). Also, we'd 
have a parallel with Harry: as Harry was sent off to Muggle relatives 
to save him from the magical community's adulation, Dean was sent off 
to be looked after by Muggles (an orphanage?) to save him from attack.

I am also curious about Dean's artistic talents which we have reason 
to have described to us in each of the books. Again, I can't help but 
wonder that these will become significant in some way.

> and 
> Angelina Johnson may well be so too, as far as I can see.  I do not 
> think one can conclude from the names of those two characters that 
> the wizarding world has had the same attitude towards race as the 
> muggle-world, given that they easily both can be muggle-born.  They 
> would then represent former (I hope) attitudes towards race in the 
> muggle-world rather than in the wizarding world.  Even if they 
> themselves are not muggleborn, the family-names can have come into 
> the wizarding-world by way of marriage in earlier time, or by way 
> of an ancestor being a muggleborn wizard or witch.

Back to the subject at hand: I agree with Christian and I don't 
really see why Dean and Angelina having Western names indicate the 
magical community's racial prejudice; on the contrary, the magical 
community appears to be quite colour-blind. They do, of course, have 
their pure-blood/Muggle-born prejudices, but that's something 
different.

There could be miriad reasons for Dean's and Angelina's names, and 
black people have come to England for loads of reasons. Their 
ancestors could have changed their names at any point and it's not 
necessarily the case that they came to the UK from the Caribbean or 
the USA. They could have come here directly from Africa (yes, perhaps 
as slaves) and been given "Christian" names by missionaries. 

I'm not really sure what point Ebony is trying to make WRT England's 
colonial past. To say the non-white Hogwarts students come from 
places previously colonised by England is a bit simplistic - England 
had relations of one sort or another with every continent, and people 
from all over the world have been settling in the UK for many 
generations. That some of them would have been wizards and witches 
only stands to reason. 

A considerable number of immigrants to this country came here to 
escape persecution. In that respect, it could be the case that 
England was known to have a well-organised concealed magical 
community and was a good place to escape local perscution (despite 
English Muggles not being particularly nice to magical folk 
either!) , but then that's been the case with most of the waves of 
immigrants who've come here. 

It's perhaps interesting that this whole topic takes up lots of space 
in the real-world UK media right now, with a major inlflux of Arabic 
and East European immigrants causing major divisions in opinion. Yes, 
whilst there are sections of the population who don't welcome these 
folk, by and large we're pretty tolerant of them and despite the more 
rabid outbursts from some of the tabloids, most people don't have 
objections. 

-- 
GulPlum AKA Richard, making a re-appearance after a long absence due 
in part to a literally blown-up computer...