More about the wizarding world and empire...

[eloiseherisson at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 50974


Tom:
>I guess what I'm getting at here is that I just 
>don't see what all this fuss about names is for.
>I believe that Rowling simply made a mistake.

Eloise:
The fuss about names, if I understand things correctly, stems from Ebony's 
assertion that the black characters we know of having what sound like 
West-Indian names, rather than African names is indicative that there was a 
British Wizarding Empire.

I, for one, dispute that argument.

Tom:
>It's just as likely to have Potters, Grangers,
>Malfoys, Patils, and Changs in Britain, as it 
>would be to have Costas, Menendezes, Nkrumes,
>Vladoviches and Muhammads.

Eloise:
Far, far more likely to have the former, as Pen pointed out, with the 
possible exception of the last name. 

Tom:
>I think Ebony's point regarding Rowling as a
>product of the post-colonial period, along with
>that great quote from Zipes, is simply that
>Rowling, for all of her good intentions and attempts
>to divert our attention from muggle problems and onto
>parallel wizard problems, 

Eloise:
She is dealing with RL problems by metaphor, not simply trying to divert 
attention. IMHO.

These are not books about RL racism; if they were, they would not be set in a 
school of witchcraft and wizardry. They *are* books which deal with the theme 
of prejudice, however.

Tom:
>is still missing some
>key points. And one of those, is that since Britain
>has all kinds of people, it should have all kinds
>of names, and if it did, then we'd be seeing more
>of those kinds of names.

Eloise:
Britain *should have* and does, though as I have pointed out, not often in 
prominent office. For all sorts of reasons (no, some of them are not very 
creditable). And although we have a diverse ethnic mix and some areas with 
high concentrations of ethnic minorities, overall, ethnic minorities are 
still very much minorities in terms of number.

In 1991, the population of the UK was 56, 206,000. Of these, 53,062,000 were 
white,  929,000 were black. So three black students out of 1000 seems a 
fairly good proportion. And touching on your later point, this is three 
students out of the very small proportion of Hogwarts students whom we 
actually meet. Now you could argue that at least one of these should have an 
African name, but as I have pointed out before, this assumes, a) that there 
is some reason why African *wizards* should want to settle in the UK  and b) 
that their children go to Hogwarts, rather than African schools of magic as 
you and I have both suggested they might.

You see, *my* impression of the WW is that the different wizarding nations 
tend to be rather isolated. That things like the Triwizard and Percy's 
department are efforts to bring together different wizarding cultures who are 
quite happy to keep themselves to themselves and who mutually don't 
understand each other very well. After all (a very minor canon) it was the 
Bulgarian minister who though it was very funny to pretend not to be able to 
communicate. That, as in real life, sport is the only field where many people 
actively come face to face with other cultures.

Tom:
>One defense pops into my mind, although it is a
>feeble one, to be sure. Rowling said in an interview
>that Hogwarts had roughly one thousand students. And
>we've not even met five percent of them all. So there
>very well may be a Nkrume at Hogwarts that we just
>haven't encountered yet.
>
>Although frankly (and the reason I said it was a feeble
>defense,) I'm not sure that exonerates her... she could
>be putting more of an effort in to, y'know, indicate
>diversity at the school.

Eloise:
What you seem to be asking for is that the ethnic mix at Hogwarts should be 
seen to be even greater than the ethnic mix of the population as a whole. 

As Pen asked, why?

*Should* she be going out of her way to point out *all* the students from 
ethnic minorities? Isn't it a little discriminatory to mention them simply 
because of their race?

The fact that we have already seen a larger number of black students than 
ones whose ethnic origins lie in the Indian subcontinent (in a reversal of 
the RL situation), together with the lack of mention of Dean's ethnicity in 
the UK original leads me to the inevitable suspicion that JKR has been pushed 
in the direction of publishing what it is perceived to be acceptable from the 
US viewpoint. If we did extrapolate from the numbers of ethnic minority 
students of whom we know, given the small proprtion of Hogwarts students we 
have met, we should find that they already form a much higher proportion than 
we would find in the general population.

Amy:

>I think that "we Yanks" forget that other cultures do not encourage the 
"melting pot" >theory of social structure.   
>Great Britain still has royalty, and probably will for a long time.  It 
might not be >"acceptable" to put an
> Anglicized first name with an ethnic surname in their culture.  In the USA 
we do this >all the time, 
>because we want to be accepted, to be like everyone else.  I don't think 
that JKR's >omission of ethnic 
>names is a lack of "political correctness."    It's possible that  people in 
Great Britain >don't name their 
>children anything they like, but what they are expected to name them.

Eloise:
I think that as Pip has pointed out, many people with African surnames do in 
fact have European forenames. Many of them are Christian, for a start and 
therefore do literally have Christian names (as we often call forenames). 

I can asure you that people in the UK name their children whatever they like 
(within the constraints of their own cultural naming traditions, where these 
exist).
    
~Eloise