[ SECRET POST #4243 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4243 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #607.
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

[(Anonymous)]

Near as I can tell, with Harry, specifically, it comes from the fact that some fans just one day up and randomly decided that James must have been Indian, on the basis that 1) there are Indians living in England and 2) Rowling never explicitly said that James wasn't Indian. Therefore HE WAS DEFINITELY INDIAN AND DISAGREEING OR FINDING THIS REASONING A LITTLE WEIRD AND/OR LACKING MEANS UR AN EVIL RAAACISSSTTT. So of course Harry must also be Indian. (Because Potter is the most Indian surname ever, I guess?) Don't tend to see these folks talk much about the Patil twins tho.

With Hermione, there's some justification for "Hermione is black imo" given that she's played by a black actress in the play, which is intended to be canon. Still stupid when people throw fits that others disagree with them, ofc.

[(Anonymous)]

"Some people are assholes about it" doesn't actually conflict with "it's an interesting and valid textual interpretation" though

This nonsense about ~~~~JUST WOKE UP AND DECIDED ONE DAY~~~~ bugs me

[(Anonymous)]

da
I've a hard time calling an interpretation "valid" when there is absolutely nothing to support it.

[(Anonymous)]

It is nonsense, though. "Rowling never said James wasn't Indian and there are lots of Indians living in England, therefore James is Indian" is the only argument I have ever seen made for this theory, and I've been in HP fandom since WELL before it arose. There is literally no actual argument, evidence, or proof of any kind whatsoever to indicate that James Potter was Indian. It's just a collective assumption that some fans invented wholesale for literally no reason except that they wanted him to be Indian. It isn't even Indian fans that I see promoting it. It's mostly white fans who imo are just trying to be progressive, if one defines progressive as throwing fits at anyone who doesn't accept your personal headcanon as actual canon.

[(Anonymous)]

it's too hot to argue about this in depth.

but just for clarity, when I say "valid interpretation" I don't mean "canon".

[(Anonymous)]

Well a lot of people seem to see that the Dursleys are the type of family that are extremely racist so Harry being a minority on top of being magical explains their shitty attitude towards him and why they'd lock him up and dehumanize him.

Harry was a very small kid who never did anything to deserve that amount of ridiculously awful treatment he got and it's easy for a lot of people see the similarities of racism against minorities.

[(Anonymous)]

Racial minorities aren't the only type of minorities and minorities aren't the only type of people "proper" society dumps on.

[(Anonymous)]

The Dursleys supposed to be like a Roald Dahlesque bad guardians that you see in children's fiction. They lock him because they hate magic. You can read it like a parallel to racism if you want, but trying to say its canon and that's the only way it makes sense? Nah. It's missing the point that HP was still like a children's book with these type of fairytale tropes, if they wanted serious things like real life racism that affects people in the real world (unlike wizard racism which is still fiction despite being a metaphor) it would need to be handled much more differently than that.

[cakemage]

The problem I have with that argument is that if Harry were mixed-race and the Dursleys' hatred of him was partially based on racism, they would have most definitely brought it up multiple times, though probably not in front of company. Must keep up appearances, after all. And even if Vernon, Petunia and Dudley managed to refrain from making racist comments out loud (doubtful, as most racists seem to have trouble keeping their mouths shut and those three weren't exactly known for their subtlety), Marge absolutely would have said something horrible about Harry's mixed-race status, and she would have done so frequently and proudly. And loudly.

Honestly, if people want to headcanon Harry as Indian and Hermione as black, more power to 'em, but I have to admit that there are times when adherence to that view comes across as performative wokeness. Not always, mind, but that's the impression I get with some of the posts on the topic.

[(Anonymous)]

It pretty much always comes across that way to me, performative wokeness. JK Rowling did that herself when she pretend she didn't have a white girl in her head when she created Hermione, while writing the books, and up until a few years ago.

Changing the race of an established character is almost always done, in part, because of laziness. Can't come up with something new, change their race! Don't non white people deserve their own characters?

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly don't think JKR was trying to pretend Hermione was black all along or whatever. I think the comment about her never being described as white was meant more like, her race wasn't important enough to mention, so she can be any race if you want. It was defending the decision to have a black actress play her in the play.

Of course, you can assume she was white because pretty much any time a character wasn't white, JKR outright stated it (Dean Thomas and Kinglsey Shacklebolt) or you could tell from their name (Cho Chang, Parvati and Padma Patil).

[(Anonymous)]

I remember there was some reasoning for Harry being Indian that made sense when I last read it. I wish I could remember it... but for the most part I stick to the easy way of just seeing the characters like their movie counterparts.

[(Anonymous)]

For both hermione and harry, I think the main starting factor was the way their hair is described. Bushy, messy, bothers the (british, white, staid) Dursleys in harry's case, only smoothed by huge amounts of potions/product in Hermione's (ie relaxers) and POC fans found something relatable in that, and then things snowballed from there.

one of the big meta posts about Desi Harry mentions that if Harry were biracial, having his mother's green eyes would be much more noticeable, and that makes sense with everyone commenting on them All The Fucking Time. The most interesting evidence to me was that whenever Harry is dreaming/having visions from Voldemort's POV, the narration always points out Voldemort's paleness (pale skin, pale hands) as if that were something surprising to Harry or othering somehow. And Hari is a common Indian name, I forget what potter was supposed to be the anglicized version of.

anyway, I don't think it comes 100% out of nowhere. obviously JKR didn't think of it in the 90s, but it makes sense within the text and it's fun to imagine.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I don't really see the point of race-bending Harry. Sure, if you're South Asian you get a character who sort of looks like you. But Harry wasn't raised Indian. He went from being an isolated child living with the Dursleys, who certainly neither knew nor cared about Indian culture to immersing himself entirely in British magical culture, which seems to be rooted firmly somewhere between the Middle Ages and the 1950s, with all the lack of multiculturalism that implies. Racebending literally any other character in the book would be more meaningful.