[ SECRET POST #2828 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2828 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Wakfu]


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03.
[rupaul's drag race]


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04.
[Law and Order: Criminal Intent]


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05.
[3-2-1 Contact: The Time Team]


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06.
[Anna Popplewell, Reign]


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07.
[The Strain]


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08.
[Justice League]


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09.
[Louisa May Alcott's Little Women]

















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #404.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. http://i57.tinypic.com/a0ujyg.png

[(Anonymous)]

This'll be interesting

[(Anonymous)]

I think "reading canon Harry as desi" is ambiguous. It could mean "I've read canon and I think Harry is desi in canon," or it could mean that someone is reading Harry Potter to see what it would look like if Harry were desi. To see what reading it in that light reveals. And to be frank, the latter doesn't bother me in the slightest (and the former only a little). There's no real evidence for it, and the intent of the novels is clearly not in that direction, but it's an interesting idea and it makes me curious.

[morieris]

Now I have not read HP in a long, long while, but..."We also know Lily was white" - I don't doubt this but where was it said or hinted or implied.

I do kind of see what you're saying re: your last paragraph. I always see "Harry's Desi and...that's it, nothing else about him has changed."

[(Anonymous)]

So...does that mean I'm not black if I don't fall under whatever cultural mores you think make people black? Because fuck that.

[(Anonymous)]

He doesn't have brown eyes, so I agree with you.

[(Anonymous)]

I hate racebending in general, unless the writers actually take culture and ethnicity into account when they rewrite the character's entire history and make them a half-OC.

SJW that scream about race not mattering and what's wrong with a white character suddenly being black with nothing different about them can fuck right off.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you that it takes more than pixels to make a cultural identity, but "he had an English name" isn't a very good support for your argument.

Why do you care?

[(Anonymous)]

Unless someone is giving you shit because you imagine Harry as white, I don't see how this matters at all. If they are, then yeah that sucks, but if they're just writing headcanons and fic about a non-white Harry, then what's the issue?

[(Anonymous)]

We need more POC characters that are actually POC characters, not the erasure of races of already existing white characters.

desi?

[(Anonymous)]

uuuhm... what the hell does desi mean?!

The name isn't a good argument at all.

[(Anonymous)]

People brought over to be indentured servants or slaves (yes, the British had them too) and they ended up with English names. And a fair amount of immigrant families have changed their names.

[(Anonymous)]

Is it because you have a hard time imagining yourself as Harry if he's not white?

Serious question, not sarcasm.

[(Anonymous)]

I knew a black guy named John Smith.
And that's the whitest white guy name to ever white.

[(Anonymous)]

mixed race people don't exist

poc with english last names don't exist either

colonization never happened

For what it's worth . . .

[feotakahari]

Wizards don't seem to put much stock in skin color. I mean, Blaise Zabini is black, and he's apparently a pureblood by wizard standards. I don't recall anyone making a big deal over Lee Jordan's race, either.

[(Anonymous)]

The Harry Potter books are full of British myths, old folk magic, symbolism rooted in the cultural memory: the cultural inheritance of the indigenouos Brits - the *white* indigenous tribes of Britain.

That's why Harry Potter is white. He is a love letter to ancient British history and the deep rooted myths and traditions of Britain, and (until very recently) that is a white history, like it or not.

Anything else is just a cheap attempt at cultural appropriation - something that goes two ways.

I'm not saying don't have more POCs. Hell, the world is crying out for POC characters. I'm just saying don't be a fecking hypocrite.

[(Anonymous)]

87% of the UK population are white.

Harry, James & Potter are very common names.

Snape & Lily seem to be from the North of England. The ethnic breakdown of the North of England ranges from 96% - 86% white.

I grew up in a small village in Lancashire, until I went to secondary school (11yrs old) I had never seen a black person (apart from on the TV). Indians & Pakistanis, yes - had lovely Indian next door neighbours and I played cricket with a lot of Pakistani & Indian lads. Random factoid there were 5 Snape's on my villages WW2 memorial and 3 on the WW1 memorial.

I'm not saying it's impossible but I've never met an Asian called Lily, let alone Lily Evans. Evans is 8th most common surname in the UK and is Welsh in origin. Again the ethnic breakdown of Wales is similar to the North of England.

Additionally, only 3% of the total UK population are black. 6.9% are Asian and 2% mixed.

So just from a purely statically POV, James Potter & Lily Evans are highly likely to have been white. In fact, Harry Potter probably has Welsh ancestory and apparently Merlin was Welsh so you could quite possibility say that Harry is very distantly related to Merlin.

Also, Hermoine in my mind is one of those very English names which conjures up an upper-middles class white girl who goes to an exclusive boarding school, owns a pony and is the lacrosse captain (I grew up reading Enid Blyton so anyone with an posh sounding name generally looks like that)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think anyone is arguing that Rowling intended Harry to be anything other than white. Its clearly a "Death of the Author" reading, but Harry being POC/Lily and James being a mixed race couple is something that people do occasionally read in, and there is nothing wrong with that. Its not like they are forcing it on you.

[(Anonymous)]

Why does it bother you so much? Why on earth would it make you so angry? Is it really that important to you that EVERYONE considers this fictional character to be white?

[(Anonymous)]

You could just as easily have James Potter be black or Asian (or his mother was, if you are determined to keep Potter as a white name, though I know a Jamaican family of Potters) and Lily Evans white - Harry was raised by Lily's family and specifically didn't have any cultural connection to his father's world.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

"Inconsistent with canon..."

Oh noes. A self-consciously transformative work is inconsistent with an embarrassingly bullshit method of understanding literature. Dot, fetch me my pearls, I must clutch them.

[(Anonymous)]

While it is fairly implicit that Rowling intended Harry to be read as white, your points against him being POC don't really hold up. For one, last names don't necessarily help when tracing ethnicity. If we are trying to imagine how Harry could be POC and still be canon compliant, there are definitely enough unknowns in his ancestry to do so - and that's even before imagining something like adoption somewhere in Lily's family tree. And the ethnicity of the actor that plays a character doesn't necessarily reflect the ethnicity of a character - see the entire history of POC in Hollywood.

I agree with you that Harry is culturally middle class anglo British - though if we are assuming Lily's family was partially desi or black, you could further assume that Petunia might have rejected her desi or black culture when she rejected her magical powers and took on Vernon's 'acceptable' white middle class cultural identity.

All in all, I think it's an interesting thought process tat gets people thinking about their assumptions about ethnicity and culture and is valuable for that, if nothing else. Canon it is not, but stupid it is not either.

[(Anonymous)]

Harry Potter is obviously meant to be white, so race bending him makes no sense to me.

Doctor Who I have massive issues with though. Why haven't we had a black doctor already??? The dude regenerates FFS - there's nothing to say he can't be any other race, or gender even. Idris Elba as the Doctor is something I'd crawl over broken glass to see.

YHINMH

[elephantinegrace]

Your Headcanon Is Not My Headcanon (Or should that be YHCINMHC?)