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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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Harry Potter is racist AF. Rowling named the black guy Kingsley Shacklebolt and the Asian girl Cho Chang. The books are pro-slavery too, and argue that if you free slaves they'll turn to alcoholism. Rowling has always been a white supremacist.
There are a lot of layers of arbitrary interpretation here. Can't we just stick to criticize opinions JKR actually expressed and is known to support, without having to make shit up? There are plenty of them anyway.
P.s. Even in the worst case scenario, not every book is a manifest for what the author thinks. People are able to write stories that do not reflect their worldviews.
She invented a world with race based slavery and only addressed it by normalizing the slavery whenever an outside took issue with it. It would have been easy to have the Weasleys be opposed to House Elves, but they also wanted one and the reader is suppose to feel pity that our poor, loving, relatable family can't have a house slave.
See, it's little things like that, building up over time, while I quit half way though. Way too many "that was weird" moments for me.
Are you sure? Like, regardless of JK's politics, where else is an author going to get ideas from? People are able to write characters that don't reflect their world view, but the thesis of a story is going to reflect the writer's beliefs and morals.
This discussion is the kind of stuff I really don't care about. I read the book when I was a kid and I remember clearly feeling for the injustice of elves being slave, cheering when Dobby was freed and for Hermione and her movement (she started one, I believe). So I am not sure what's the point to discuss what the author "could have written" or what you think she meant you to feel when writing. These are both assumptions that I can't even relate to, so they fit perfectly into what I was talking about: starting from "she is racist" and then trying to find bits and pieces in the books that can be used to support the claim.
Assuming this is true in every case, which is debatable, none of the stuff mentioned is the thesis of the book. In fact, I answered to a comment that was claiming she was a white suprematist based on character names and stuff like this. On the other hand, a HUGE role in the story is taken by the opposition to the "pure blood" movement (embodied by the main villain), and basically every positive character is or supports mixed-bloods (in English they are called mud-bloods? Not sure). To me this in complete anthitesis with white suprematism, but I would use neither to try to infer what JKR views are on race/society.
My point is that in 7 books and thousands of pages you will find details that you can use to suggest her views are anything you want. The main plot of HP is generally a positive story, nothing that can be linked to racism, white suprematism etc. and so are the main characters. So why picking minor details or creative interpretations of the books instead of her actual words as JKR? Like yes, a transphobic, racist, whatever wrote a nice book series, possibly before becoming transphobia, racist etc.
You're misremembering how the slavery plot goes, for what it's worth. In Chamber of Secrets, yes, Dobby is meant to be a sympathetic figure who we're happy is freed. However, following her pattern of "returning to a plot point that got pushback two books ago to justify it", in Goblet we learn that Dobby is a little sicko for wanting freedom and payment, and Hermione's efforts with SPEW (btw that's slang for vomit in the UK} are consistently portrayed as misguided and naive.
I think it's incredibly silly to suggest that you can't make some judgements about an author based on literally a million words that they pulled directly out of their psyche. Another classic example is Joanne's portrayal of women. If a woman is evil, she's fat, mannish, and ugly. If a woman is good, she's motherly and, in the case of Hermione, Luna, and Ginny, not like other girls. Nobody is really saying she was a hateful bigot while writing those books, but the seeds were certainly there.
I will leave out interpretations of stuff in the book. You can interpret it in multiple ways, the author might have meant it in multiple ways, plus there are probably way more facts to keep into consideration that revolve around a character in the book that is pivotal for the whole plot.
You can make some judgements, of course. But there
The first comment in this chain, which is the reason why I am discussing at all...:
So, the nuance of the characterization of women, whatever that actually means in practice, sounds already more reasonable. Stuff like this quote are completely insane IMHO.
Fair enough, that person is definitely engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric, but I don't think their point is entirely wrong. This feels like a classic case of racism and bigotry being seen as all-or-nothing situations. Those character names are obviously not coming from a place of cultural sensitivity (it's been pointed out that Cho and Chang are both family names from entirely different cultures), and while you refuse to engage with the point, portraying slavery as anything other than abominable is just a terrible decision. I would not agree with the comment OP that Rowling has always been a white supremacist, but I would say that she is/was a rather thoughtless liberal, in the centrist definition of that word.
Fair enough.
Just for fun I opened LinkedIn, and I have found 2 pages of people called Cho Chang. This doesn't say anything, of course, and I know nothing about Asian names and cultures, but I still found it interesting.
What JK Rowling has actually expressed is that when a black woman wins a medal for boxing, she is obviously a male, regardless of genetics, anatomy, endocrinology, the law, or her own personal history. Rowling thinks black women are below womanhood, and are only granted it by the grace of "real women" such as herself. She's a white supremacist.
So there is no need to make triple jumps to infer her political stance based on elements in her books.
I am glad we agree.
Why does it bother you to analyze her writings?
It doesn't bother me, it seems just a silly and far fetched way to retrofit opinions on her, using an invalid methodology (I.e., you don't have to agree with every detail you write about in a fictional book - I don't think the books are a good argument to show she thinks school should start at 11 and last 7 years, for example).
On a greater scale, IMHO it makes the arguments against her less compelling, as I can't honestly take seriously an argument that is based on choosing a name for a character or something like this, or a person who unironically uses this argument.
So you believe that a writer can somehow completely remove their opinions, morals, and political leanings from their writing? I mean we literally go through books in high school English and pick a part their themes in relation to their lives, beliefs, etc.
But I'm sure Lovecraft kept his fear of foreigners and contempt for minorities out of his writings tho
No, I believe that not everything an author writes is a political manifesto for their ideas. I believe some is, and in fiction this could be a very variable amount. The chance of minor plot or character features being such a clear representation of the author's views is even smaller, compared to general and major plot dynamics or characteristics of main characters. Your Lovecraft example I think is very fitting, as even I (who studied few of his works) know a bunch of short stories entirely focused on the issue of "others". It's way more reasonable to infer the views of the author when this is a recurring theme, core to some works etc.
BTW from a logical standpoint, the negation of "everything" is not "nothing". Me saying that I don't think every element in a book is a manifesto doesn't mean no element is.
I do believe that is possible and I can tell you why- Roald Dahl was an unapologetic bigot. He absolutely loathed Jews. Even the museum devoted to him talks about it quite openly. But he never put any hint of that into his children's books. To the point that my (Jewish) father, who was aware of it and very sensitive to antisemitism, still bought me Roald Dahl books.
I've read a fair amount of his adult fiction and don't remember any antisemitism there either.
I don't think that is the case for Rowling, however. I think her books, from what I have seen, are pretty openly bigoted.
She's pretty racist, dude.
Even the kindest interpretation there shows that she has some incredibly stereotypical concepts of black people.
I specifically suggested to use her actual opinions (like the shit she tweets) instead of making stuff up from the books.
So I guess we agree...?
It seemed to me like you were disagreeing with the claim that she's racist. If you were not, then yes, we agree.