#cant remember the balck ppl being inferior tho so im holding it for the latam translator for being a pal and changing that somehow

[linipikk]

Sounds like you were pretty ignorant then if you didn’t have all the mass of super explicit and easy to see racism and Jew hate in hp. She literally says black people are inferior, Asian girls are objects, and goblin bankers are like jews word for word in the books.

I was very terribly ignorant! yes! i was also 8 or 9 and, albeit, through my teen years the books were still being published and i still liked them even with the faults even i could see. And never read them in english either , and it is a well known fact that harry potter translations are somewhat better than the og books. And, when you come from a 3rd world country, everything that is produced in a predominantly white and/or colonialist culture and really privileged society has this veil of racism that you learn to ignore very VERY early on. It was work to unlearn that, and it took me until i was pursuing storytelling as a career. Many have never thought more about harry potter because it is very low in the list of priorities.

And not only that. Jews are a very small community here, also asians (like... any asian whole-continent-east south south pacific, any tbh), not many in Colombia, and much less in the very specific ambient i grew up in. Remember that there is nuance. And that back in the day it made sense to me that a white brit would know nothing about other cultures. "They never know or even include us in anything, and really it all seems so plain when they add another, I can believe they are just that ignorant" or so i thought. But of course I was wrong.

The real shocker to me was when I was in the uk, seeing so mahy people from so many different places and cultures and thinking "wao, ok, now i see what the deal is " .

Nuance, my friend. Because very many if not all classical tales are hella antisemtic but i didnt knew that. for me those were just stories and i, of course, wasnt just believing them with my eyes closed, and just assumed the author was exagerating the bad guys as they always do (with us at least). There is this fairy tale about slavery that privileged people tell themselves that apply only in their imagination and we learn to ignore that because that is not the reality we see here but we still want fo enjoy the fun parts so we overlook the bad in order to find a little good. Same with classism, same with racism. And then come back to earth and think about it whole and ultimately learn.

We shouldnt just ignore it tho! but thats how it is because we all have different experiences. I dont know how begin to tell you about how the fandom experience here was so so different before the internet-harry potter (those two are linked) .

But I grew up and learnt to be a storyteller who is aware of all of those things. But also, i am still allowed to feel nostalgic about something that was important to me ina personal level, while also understanding the nuance of why i liked it how i read it and what happens with people who still likes it and why. And still try to open with them a dialogue of the problems, a real productive discussion, if you will. But I wont look at the girl waiting for her dad to finish his class at 8 pm and shun her for reading harry potter, i will try to nudge her to also read something else and open her worldview another degree tho. It is a " Yes, and..." approach.

You send anon messages to randos so I dont think you are very open to a bigger understandings of anything and just want to feel all mighty from your high horse, but I do like to ramble about stuff.