Race Relations in the Potterverse
Aug. 29th, 2008 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sgt_majoretteOr in fandom, which is different. People should admit the real reason they have a problem with George and Angelina, that's all.
There was a spirited debate on this topic on FictionAlley; for your convenience I have stripped out all the witless babblings of those pesky "other people". You can sort of guess, though...
"Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look. 'All right, then,' she said..."
In that whole dialog, there's no indication that it was expected that Fred would go to the ball with Angelina. In all the books, there's no hint of any relationship between Fred or George and any of their schoolmates. There's no other big event to illustrate relationships or the absence thereof. Neither Fred nor George ever seems to have taken a girl to Hogsmeade.
My personal feeling was that the ease with which Fred asked a girl to the biggest event evah and the skill of his dancing indicated that if one of the twins was gay, it had to be Fred, because no normal sixteen-year-old boy is that comfortable around girls.
Or maybe it's creepy because George was the gay one? Or because Angelina, described as a "tall Black girl", was taller than George? Or because the spectre of Black/mixed race children with red hair and freckles puts racist terror in the hearts of parents on both sides?
When Angelina was sixteen, she probably couldn't tell them apart. Then they left school and she went off and did whatever she did and two years later she runs into them again and a couple of hours later, the one with two ears is dead. Turns out that's the one she sort of dated. Huh.
Then years pass, some other stuff happens and she and George hook up. On the scale of creepy relationships in the Potterverse, this one doesn't even register.
I mean, imagine the pre-Cana conference where Ginny makes Harry chose between her and the great warm Weasleycosm, and his obvious sexual preference. So very unhealthy...
Some genotypes just don't mix. We have a saying here in the US, to treat {someone} "like a red-headed stepchild". You have to be beyond lucky, you have to be blessed, like by direct divine intervention, for the ginger/chocolate combination to work out.
Picture a big fuzzy red Afro and freckles...
Nope, I'm afraid the kids are going to be funny-looking. And I'll bet all Angelina's aunties are going to be at the wedding making audibly rude remarks which will be repeated at the christenings with the qualifier, "...bless its little heart."
Trust me, unless somebody knows a way to put a powerful glamour on a newborn, the kids will be homely. And there will be a whole bunch of Black women wearing big church hats with little net veils at every ceremony, lurking like Dementors with corsages:
"You know, the nose comes from his side of the family."
"Honey, so do the lips, if you ask me!"
"She's wearing flats, and she's still a half head taller. She might as well gone ahead and worn decent high heel shoes."
One of the aunties will pick up the child, and no matter what proper thing she says, the baby will not be fooled and will scream like a wounded banshee. Every family gathering for the rest of its life, that child will hide behind Nana Molly when Mean Auntie walks into the room, and will never be able to articulate why.
A lot of politically-charged terms here: biracial, mixed-race, half-caste...
We don't have castes in the US, so I have no frame of reference for that, but I can tell you that when people here say "biracial", they mean the parents identify themselves as different ethnicities. That becomes meaningless in a heterogeneous society, because unless you just fell off the boat, you're either mixed or you're inbred. Almost every American that checks "Black" on the census form is actually mixed, most likely with a bit of Scots-Irish and a bit of Native American. I'm betting that Angelina's background is Caribbean, which works out similarly. So there's probably just enough Scots-Irish in her, even if she's dark-skinned, for that fuzzy red gene to have a fighting chance!
It's not that race-mixing produces ugly children – think Blaise Zabini -- but that Angelina and George's children, specifically, will probably not be the prettiest of the Weasley cousins.
Angelina's family thinks she could have done better for herself, and the Weasleys wonder if George is quite over Fred, but they seem content together, so even the mean West Indian aunties allow as how things will probably work out for the best.
Roxanne is named after the mean auntie who made little Freddie cry at his baptism by looking at him funny. Angelina did it to annoy her, and also because Angelina is one of the few people who know that spinster Auntie Roxanne (who thinks George is, well... "Freddie favors your husband, honey. That's so sweet, bless its little heart") has a huge cache of silver, jewelry and tea sets and whatnot, with no children to inherit it.
Auntie Roxanne was a Slytherin, you see...
L to R: Freddie "Deuce" Weasley, George Weasley,
Angelina Johnson Weasley, Roxie (Roxanne) Weasley, Roxanne Johnson
Angelina makes sure she is always seated when she is photographed next to her husband. As you can see from looking at her Aunt Roxanne, whom she resembles almost exactly, Angelina is quite a bit taller than George. If truth be told, however, the height differential bothers Angelina much more than it bothers George.
Roxie idolizes her Great-Auntie Roxanne. She understands that this is what she was born to do, and it's ever so much fun to make Great-Auntie pull that face. Unlike her older brother, Roxie is not in the least afraid of Mean Auntie.
There was a spirited debate on this topic on FictionAlley; for your convenience I have stripped out all the witless babblings of those pesky "other people". You can sort of guess, though...
"Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look. 'All right, then,' she said..."
In that whole dialog, there's no indication that it was expected that Fred would go to the ball with Angelina. In all the books, there's no hint of any relationship between Fred or George and any of their schoolmates. There's no other big event to illustrate relationships or the absence thereof. Neither Fred nor George ever seems to have taken a girl to Hogsmeade.
My personal feeling was that the ease with which Fred asked a girl to the biggest event evah and the skill of his dancing indicated that if one of the twins was gay, it had to be Fred, because no normal sixteen-year-old boy is that comfortable around girls.
Or maybe it's creepy because George was the gay one? Or because Angelina, described as a "tall Black girl", was taller than George? Or because the spectre of Black/mixed race children with red hair and freckles puts racist terror in the hearts of parents on both sides?
When Angelina was sixteen, she probably couldn't tell them apart. Then they left school and she went off and did whatever she did and two years later she runs into them again and a couple of hours later, the one with two ears is dead. Turns out that's the one she sort of dated. Huh.
Then years pass, some other stuff happens and she and George hook up. On the scale of creepy relationships in the Potterverse, this one doesn't even register.
I mean, imagine the pre-Cana conference where Ginny makes Harry chose between her and the great warm Weasleycosm, and his obvious sexual preference. So very unhealthy...
Some genotypes just don't mix. We have a saying here in the US, to treat {someone} "like a red-headed stepchild". You have to be beyond lucky, you have to be blessed, like by direct divine intervention, for the ginger/chocolate combination to work out.
Picture a big fuzzy red Afro and freckles...
Nope, I'm afraid the kids are going to be funny-looking. And I'll bet all Angelina's aunties are going to be at the wedding making audibly rude remarks which will be repeated at the christenings with the qualifier, "...bless its little heart."
Trust me, unless somebody knows a way to put a powerful glamour on a newborn, the kids will be homely. And there will be a whole bunch of Black women wearing big church hats with little net veils at every ceremony, lurking like Dementors with corsages:
"You know, the nose comes from his side of the family."
"Honey, so do the lips, if you ask me!"
"She's wearing flats, and she's still a half head taller. She might as well gone ahead and worn decent high heel shoes."
One of the aunties will pick up the child, and no matter what proper thing she says, the baby will not be fooled and will scream like a wounded banshee. Every family gathering for the rest of its life, that child will hide behind Nana Molly when Mean Auntie walks into the room, and will never be able to articulate why.
A lot of politically-charged terms here: biracial, mixed-race, half-caste...
We don't have castes in the US, so I have no frame of reference for that, but I can tell you that when people here say "biracial", they mean the parents identify themselves as different ethnicities. That becomes meaningless in a heterogeneous society, because unless you just fell off the boat, you're either mixed or you're inbred. Almost every American that checks "Black" on the census form is actually mixed, most likely with a bit of Scots-Irish and a bit of Native American. I'm betting that Angelina's background is Caribbean, which works out similarly. So there's probably just enough Scots-Irish in her, even if she's dark-skinned, for that fuzzy red gene to have a fighting chance!
It's not that race-mixing produces ugly children – think Blaise Zabini -- but that Angelina and George's children, specifically, will probably not be the prettiest of the Weasley cousins.
Angelina's family thinks she could have done better for herself, and the Weasleys wonder if George is quite over Fred, but they seem content together, so even the mean West Indian aunties allow as how things will probably work out for the best.
Roxanne is named after the mean auntie who made little Freddie cry at his baptism by looking at him funny. Angelina did it to annoy her, and also because Angelina is one of the few people who know that spinster Auntie Roxanne (who thinks George is, well... "Freddie favors your husband, honey. That's so sweet, bless its little heart") has a huge cache of silver, jewelry and tea sets and whatnot, with no children to inherit it.
Auntie Roxanne was a Slytherin, you see...
L to R: Freddie "Deuce" Weasley, George Weasley,
Angelina Johnson Weasley, Roxie (Roxanne) Weasley, Roxanne Johnson
Angelina makes sure she is always seated when she is photographed next to her husband. As you can see from looking at her Aunt Roxanne, whom she resembles almost exactly, Angelina is quite a bit taller than George. If truth be told, however, the height differential bothers Angelina much more than it bothers George.
Roxie idolizes her Great-Auntie Roxanne. She understands that this is what she was born to do, and it's ever so much fun to make Great-Auntie pull that face. Unlike her older brother, Roxie is not in the least afraid of Mean Auntie.
