Of Death Eaters, Fans and Racism

[witchwillow]

The Daily Deviant

This post is going to be about a Harry Potter community here on livejournal. There will be no spoilers for Book 7, but I will be using analogies from the book's universe. Please use your own discretion.

This post will be about racism.

Comments

[turtle_avenger]

Being Native American, my context for miscegenation is from the "anti-miscegenation" laws, which still effect my children actually. Today even. They can't make claims to some of their inheritance because one of their Native grandfathers married a White Cajun/Black Creole woman generations ago. But that'd be "anti-miscegenation", being against interracial marriage. I believe miscegenation is in support of it

[witchwillow]

Anti-Miscegenation as in the Anti-Miscegenation Laws were about preventing the marriage between a white person and a black person. Yes.

But the term was not used in a positive sense. It was used as 'But that would be...!'

I've never seen Jungle Fever.

I won't go into whether or not I support black entertainers who use the word nigger. But I don't think a white person can use it, no.

The community I'm talking about has the label beside fics with two human wizards (of different ethnicities, usually white/something else), with a man and a merperson, and someone with a goat.

[turtle_avenger]

Anti-Miscegenation is being against racial mixing. That is the bad term.

If this kink community is FOR racial mixing. In fact, they are writing sexual fantasies of racial mixing. How is this racist?

And, for the record, I don't believe this kink community has EVERY used the word nigger or anything remotely racist like it.

If this is a word out of a printed dictionary that people in an entire subculture understand to be a good thing, then I'd say you're out of context.

[liviapenn]

If this kink community is FOR racial mixing. In fact, they are writing sexual fantasies of racial mixing. How is this racist?

First of all, they are equating interracial relationships, such as Kingsley/Tonks or Luna/Dean, with bestiality kinkfic featuring "couples" such as woman/snake and man/goat. They are labeling them under the *same topic*.

How do you think the gay and lesbian members of fandom would feel if daily_deviant decided to have a challenge about "gay, lesbian and pedophie" relationships, all listed under a single tag, as if they were all basically the same thing and only needed one word

Second of all, they are using an offensive term (miscegenation) when there is a perfectly good neutral word (interracial) that would do. It's like purposely choosing to say "hey, you're a fag, aren't you?" when there are perfectly good neutral words (gay, homosexual) that do not have such an offensive connotation.

And, for the record, I don't believe this kink community has EVERY used the word nigger or anything remotely racist

[ciaan]

It shocks me that there are people who grew up in the USA and don't know the word miscegenation.

(I have also seen it used to refer to inter-species relations in works of science fiction or fantasy but only where the author/narrative/society/characters of the work viewed that as a bad thing.)

[red_eft]

(here via liviapenn)

The community I'm talking about has the label beside fics with two human wizards (of different ethnicities, usually white/something else), with a man and a merperson, and someone with a goat.

You'd think that all on its lonesome would set off alarm bells, but apparently not. God damn.

[elliemurasaki]

It took me twenty seconds to find the sentence Historically the term has been used to justify ethnocentric or racist attitudes and practices, such as the enactment of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws in the Wikipedia article on miscegenation. Twenty more to find Contemporary usage of the term "miscegenation" is less frequent, and the term is today often considered offensive in the one on anti-miscenegation laws.