Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

As she said, the questionnaire at the start didn't ask her about her ancestry, it asked her about cultural identification, therefore invalidating itself as a predictor. "Race", the way the general public conceives of it, is a bad proxy.

I'm confused because both videos in the last page appear to be the same.

EDIT: Nevermind, they're different now. Weird.

edited 9th Mar '16 2:56:19 PM by Victin

Time for cultural appropriation, round X. This time, it's J. K. Rowling and Native American culture in her latest Harry Potter short story.

Not that this is anything new; I can go dig up my 1st Edition D&D sourcebook Deities and Demigods and open up to them giving the Native Americans a single section to cover their wildly varying mythologies in a blended mix. Apparently fantasy writers can't be bothered to treat Native American tribes and nations as separate entities, then or now. Sigh...

Besides Rowling's mistake, I am raising an eyebrow on what the rebuttal said on how outsiders don't get the right to essentially investigate Native culture. Something along the lines on how sacred and personal their beliefs are?

... I think I get the reasoning behind it; that there's a history of Native American culture being exploited. According to the person, being that insular is what kept that culture alive.

I don't think that shutting out other cultures that are interested in knowing more about your own culture is really fostering understanding. Granted, if a person doesn't want to share information, that is their right.

Just, if the conclusion is that people are wrong to ask for answers to increase their knowledge regardless if the intent is respectful, I would never agree with it.

Actually, the Native tribes are pissed off that she's NOT asking them anything. She's just making up her own shit about very specific tribal knowledge and NOT CLEARING IT with actual Native Americans.

JK was asked a question about skinwalkers, and she said something like "that was a thing made up by no-magic people." Which was really, really, REALLY taken badly by Native Americans.

Her display of white privilege is even worse since 1) a lot of Native Americans are fans of Harry Potter, and 2) she's clearly done her research on European magic, so this stings a lot for them.

As for "outsiders aren't allowed in X culture," researching a culture for writing/research purposes or displaying a genuine love and appreciation of a culture is considerably different from cultural appropriation or fetishizing. The first two things are what happens when you ask questions and then genuinely LISTEN to the advice of who you're asking, while appropriation is when you just take shit without asking. Fetishing would be more of the "outsiders trying to become part of the culture, often without asking."

edited 9th Mar '16 7:29:22 PM by Sharysa

I'm not disputing that Rowling did wrong by Native Americans. She should have known better.

I agree. That's why I said it about those who are sincere about learning. My initial objection to the writer's position was about how they were flat out against answering any inquiries. Also why I said it's their right to not say anything if they don't want to, since I suspect that due to this cluster fuck, they are understandablely exasperated and probably don't want to have to deal with anything that might potentially screw them over.

I just think there's a missed chance for sharing what is the correct information to the sincere.

edited 9th Mar '16 7:42:55 PM by vicarious

I think it's also the fact that the term she used "skin-walker" is the type of thing that they don't talk about in general. Like Some people I saw talking about expressed their cultural discomfort even talking about it as casually as they were.

So it's not like all culture is walled off, it's just that specific concept is more "sacred" than we realize.

I see. I never had an aspect of culture that I considered sacrilegious to be discussed casually.

So I get now why it's taboo. I guess I've been more on disregarding those for the sake of increasing knowledge, though that is obviously insensitive.

Nope check the Tweets in the article, she said that in her universe they were made up by no-magic people. Seeing as she specifies her universe she's clearly aware that they're a real concept and is saying that in Harry Potter they are different from how they are in reality.

Now there are valid complaints, but let's not twist words to make things seem worse.

She's clearly altered an existing mythological concept so that it works in her universe, which I'm pretty sure is what she's done with European mythology. Now there's certainly an argument to be made that she should be more careful and alter less when dealing with non-European mythology.

edited 9th Mar '16 8:15:45 PM by Silasw

Yeah, that's what I meant by my other post. Sorry for not making that clearer.

There's also a HUGE problem where she mentioned that "the wizarding community doesn't see race," which is jarringly tone-deaf coming from an otherwise intelligent and respected person, and even MORE tone-deaf since said intelligent and respected person is famous for using extremely heavy Nazi parallels.

Like, how does she not connect the dots that the Nazis/Death-Eaters are basically racist?

edited 9th Mar '16 8:38:23 PM by Sharysa

They are but the classism parallels were more immediately apparently to me.

Well, the Death Eaters are probably too busy hatting Muggles, half bloods, lower houses wizards and other non human races to bother with skin colour or different ethnic groups.

I figured she means wizards don't see 'whites', 'black', 'yellows' etc as being different, aka RL races.

The 'racist' wizards display Fantastic Racism in the pureblood-Muggle sense, but to them your skin color or what country you're from doesn't matter at all, what matters is whether your blood has 'pure magic' or is 'dirtied by Muggles'. You could say they're racist, but it's Fantasy kind, not RL kind.

Ninja'd.

edited 9th Mar '16 9:18:12 PM by hellomoto

I suspect the idea is that in a world so full of variety that bigotry and discrimination is based more on species and magical ability than race.

Still I find that a rather foolish concept, it takes the magic world to far from the normal one, I actually think some race based conflict could be interesting, a wizarding version of The Troubles could be rather interesting.

"Just, if the conclusion is that people are wrong to ask for answers to increase their knowledge regardless if the intent is respectful, I would never agree with it."

Yeah, native american have this particular issue that is quite diferent from other, we are not used to people being this insular but nobody can blame them, so it something of a culture clash

"researching a culture for writing/research purposes or displaying a genuine love and appreciation of a culture is considerably different from cultural appropriation or fetishizing"

what is love and aprreciation? Because I remenber this thing from evangelion review about their use of chrisrtian mofits and there wasn a proper definition.

"Fetishing would be more of the "outsiders trying to become part of the culture, often without asking.""

I will disagree here, fetishing is being intersting in aspect of the culture, usually because they find their own boring(not surprising the typical steriotype is a white middle cass who is boring and wants something exotic)

"Now there's certainly an argument to be made that she should be more careful and alter less when dealing with non-European mythology."

should it? you could made the argument about native american religion since so many fuck up but using diferent interpretation where so many other have been use since...arbitrary.

And for the last, I thing she wants to mantain the parallel and the thing in diferent sphere of existant, otherwise it becomes silly

So, this Tim Wise guy explains US racism in a nutshell in the context of "How Trump Uses Race to Divide & Conquer."

I remember reading that same theory in Howard Zinn's A People's History of the US, although that book's, well... It makes a lot of sense when explaining how 'institutionalized' racism got to be the way it is in the US in particular, but it's probably too simplistic to account for racism against non-Germanic white ethnicities such as Eastern Europeans, Irish, and Italians, or pre-colonial xenophobia.

edited 16th Mar '16 4:55:54 PM by AlleyOop

True, it's quite simplistic (racism, even institutional racism, definitely would have still existed), but there's very little doubt in me that the extreme focus on brown people and the vast degree of racism the US has suffered through would be as high if this divide and conquer plan hadn't had happened.

It's simplistic, but I don't think it can't be applied to other forms of racism. Just replace "White" with "White Protestant" and the racism against Catholic immigrants, etc plays out the exact same way. The team changes size and shape, but the idea of the team is consistent.

edited 16th Mar '16 6:50:58 PM by Clarste

I don know, it feel almost malevolent, as secret group of elite decide what to do.

Also I think nacionalism play a huge role as Trump manage to code his hate speech as "protecting América"and is something is comon with nacionalists is the idea that for the country there isnt any sins except betrayal

I don't think Trump sat down and decided with anyone to play the race card the way he did. Those kinds of things are malevolent, but they come naturally.

He is just a genuine asshole.

Well, as natural as something that's been ingrained in society and culture for centuries can be anyway.

No, no, I am pretty sure he goes above and beyond the call of institutionalized racism.

In more positive news, the Ferguson city council has accepted the Justice Department overhaul of their police and court system.