Harry potter British preference=discrimination?

Doesn't Rowling know any Chinese people? Ther are lots of Chinese names laying around. It's not too difficult to combine them into a realistic, albeit probably stereotypical, name.

Tintin in the Congo is a legitimate example of a political agenda being pushed by children's media and the author himself denounced it as being due to pressure from higher-ups. It was overt in its message. If Rowling wanted to say that Johnny Foreigner is a rotten bastard who are trying to steal our culture, I think she would have been a bit more blatant about it, like having Voldemort being called Mohammed and all the death eaters being Muslim.

I just don't see how this can be interpreted as anything more than a mild goof on her part. It is not like there are interviews with her which have racist undertones which would shed new light on the Harry Potter world. It is just jumping at shadows.

Edit: Names are used in fiction because they sound good and are memorable. Cho Chang is easy to remember because it is short and alliterative. Maybe Rowling only knew people who did not have such punchy and memorable names.

edited 8th Dec '11 8:53:17 AM by YeahBro

"Cho Chang is, indeed, linguistically impossible - it's two family names, one Korean, one Chinese. It'd be like calling your token French character Smith de Gaulle."

*bzzzzzzzz*

Try again. Chang is also a Korean surname.

Well, the reason why it's so inexcusable is because it's not like Chinese names or Chinese culture is that obscure, and it wasn't like she didn't research a lot of things that are relevant to the story. I mean, if she had given Cho a Chinese name that meant something magic-like that no sane person would name their child, well, that makes sense because that's how practically half the characters in Harry Potter are named. But she's not even named for her nationality/ethnic group. She's just named wrong.

I don't mind the Harry Potter CHARACTERS being British...as Hogwarts is apparently a school only for wizards in Britain. The whole casting thing is where it gets a little dubious, IMO. Not 'OMG RACIST' dubious, but probably not the best overall choice. I think all the actors were good, and it wasn't their fault, but they should have gone with the best choice for actors nevermind if they were british or not. And Cho's name is beyond dubious all the way into research fail. For christ's sake, I'm writing a FANFICTION (not HP) that involves some russian characters and I not only researched the names, but the different ethnic groups and social situation in Russia during the time she grew up. Despite the fact that a lot of it will probably never get mentioned in the story. The LEAST Rowling could have done is given Cho an actual, you know...CHINESE name.

@52: I never assumed that Rowling was pushing an agenda. Only that she's prone to outbreaks of carelessness that rather undermine her books' clear pro-tolerance message. Other examples include the casual condescension towards Muggles by... well, just about everyone, really, and the fact that there are only two relationships in the whole series that do not portray The Power of Love as a wholly positive thing, and one of them is Dumbledore's homosexual infatuation with Grindelwald (the other being Bellatrix's thing for Voldemort). Going for a gay-positive message doesn't work so well when you had use Word of God to out your sole gay character, when he's been celibate for pretty much all of his life, and when the one time he allowed himself to fall in love with another man was his greatest moment of weakness and greatest shame.

Behind the Name (I don't know how accurate it is) suggests that Chang is actually a Chinese personal name, rather than surname. So, she has a Chinese personal name and a Korean surname in her name, Cho Chang, which seems to lend support to the idea that she's actually Chinese/Korean. And then, possibly, because the westerners around her are assholes, they continue to call her by her surname thinking it's her first name, and never think that she's any ethnicity other than Chinese.

...We could hope.

Alright, so Chang actually IS a chinese surname as well as a given name, but Cho is not a chinese given name. Going with Rowling's meaningfun names, and keeping the alliteration, in 5 minutes I came up with Meng Min (chinese order) or Min Meng (british order). Min is a name that means clever or sharp, and Meng is a surname shared with Meng Zi, arguably the most famous confucian philosopher after Confucious himself.

...it really wasn't that hard. The only way Cho Chang would make sense is if she had a korean-british dad and a chinese-british mom, and they kept her name in the korean/chinese order.

edited 8th Dec '11 9:51:51 AM by Katrika

Considering that by the time Cho was introduced, the novels were already wildly popular, and a bunch of Chinese people were probably already reading them, how did that name get past Rowling's editors?

I have no idea.

To clarify, I don't think that the mostly british cast and characters are a sign of racism, just perhaps misplaced national pride on Rowling's part for her demand for the casting. Or ignorance of how casting normally works. Seems pretty firmly ignorant, what with trying to get the nationalities of the french character's actors right, but messing up on the bulgarian's. Seems like she just wanted things to be more accurate than they really had to be.

Cho Chang's name is a different tier of ignorance, but not really something to attack her over, just something to shake your head at.

I guess I don't really understand Durmstrang, either. A lot of the characters from there seem really Eastern European (Krum and Karakoff) but it's supposed to be in Norway/Sweden? Do we ever see any Scandinavians there? I mean we have Hogwarts in Scotland which serves Britain, Beauxbatons in France which serves France, and then... there's Durmstrang.

I think that had more to do with Rowling's self-admitted terribleness at math, which shows through her population spreads for the wizarding world.

Does it really take math to understand that a school in Sweden or Norway would likely have mostly Scandinavian students?

I mean, we don't see any far-flung students at Hogwarts, or even Beauxbatons. This implies that Durmstrang is much more prestigious than either Hogwarts or Beauxbatons.

edited 8th Dec '11 10:43:16 AM by ohsointocats

Possibly some geography fail going on there, too. Rowling writes well, but her worldbuilding doesn't tend to stand up to a lot of close inspection.

Also, the fact that in the past, students may have needed to cross the Iron Curtain to attend Durmstrang, is never discussed...

Not that the wizarding world really interacts with Muggle politics, mind you. Though it's never really mentioned where that leaves Muggle-born students in all this.

The way the leader guy is called Minister of Magic seems to imply that it is connected to Muggle government, though. Which is very strange. How was Fudge appointed? With a title like that, isn't he a part of parliament?

^^^ & ^ That's not really the focus of the books though. We only get a small glimpse at the Wizarding World. If Harry decided he wanted to go into Wizard Politics, I'm sure that Rowling would have included more detail.

edited 8th Dec '11 10:56:53 AM by Pentadragon

Well, considering the government is involved, especially in the later books, these things are kind of important. Especially if say, the Ministry of Magic is a part of the greater British government, why the fuck muggle Britain isn't doing anything about the Wizard Nazis.

Just think how different the books would have been from Hermione's POV! xD

They probably would have made a lot more sense!

^^^ Maybe Wizarding England is the magical equivalent of a third world country? Everyone knows the government is unstable and is just ignoring the ongoing conflict.

edited 8th Dec '11 11:00:41 AM by Pentadragon

Hermione is honestly a bit more observant than Harry, not gonna lie.

I mean I guess it could marginally make sense that there are a lot of former Soviet Bloc students in Durmstrang if there was no way to have a wizarding school in the Soviet Bloc — I'm guessing Wizards and Communists probably wouldn't get along — but that still doesn't answer the question as to why there are no Scandinavians whatsoever there, and whether the Ministry of Magic is a part of the greater British government or not. It seems like if it was a separate entity, they would have their own PM, or President, King, or Caliph or Pharaoh or Czar or Khan or Grand Poobah or whatever instead of a mere Minister.

edited 8th Dec '11 11:05:57 AM by ohsointocats

Could the Ministry of Magic have been a former part of the British government that has since gone rouge? The title 'Minister of Magic' is more of an artifact than anything now.

Sorry. I'm just trying to make sense of it myself.