JK Rowling says that there were Jewish wizards at Hogwarts: Only religion not included is Wicca - Polidicks

[QUOTE=elowin;46760032]Dude, he's the alchemy teacher. Jew confirmed.[/QUOTE] I thought the goblins were Jews.

Jedi was put on the UK census, so where's the Jedi wizards?

[QUOTE=shozamar;46758947]This is a good ideal to have, but for a minority race growing up where almost every main character belongs to the dominant race it's pretty hard to follow. We want to see ourselves in literature and film, the point of most protagonists is to be a vehicle for the reader/watcher (hence why most characters in Western society are male and white, probably the most numerous group in relation to how influential they are). To a child growing up in a society that doesn't represent their race/religion properly, the comparative lack of role-models of their race/religion almost certainly leads to the insecurity that they're somehow defective. Hence why minorities gravitate towards characters who do represent them.[/QUOTE] The problem with this is, that the majority of writers or content creators will also be part of the majority in terms numbers and very often they will be jotting down a world as they know it as opposed to one that tends to put minorities into the forefront. In truth the majority is often far more consciously colour|sexuality blind than the minorities themselves. Unconsciously they do commit a lot of nontolerant things. At least in western societies. And it can be incredibly odd, to see minorities be more forward in fiction based on the world as we know it than what they'd be really like in the world. It can create a break of immersion for the majority of readers as well. In terms of diversity the harry potter books were actually fairly well done. While the majority were certainly brits, you did also have asians, indians and a bunch of other minorities which are often found in the UK. You even had a "fantasy" racist group which works incredibly well in translation and works fairly well to represent real world racism.

[QUOTE=NiandraLades;46747547]I'll be honest, having authors explain this sort of thing about characters outside of the actual book always makes me raise an eyebrow slightly and feels like super weak representation in my opinion[/QUOTE] The Star Wars Expanded Universe sort of did this for a shit ton of minor characters that happened to have minor cult followings (i.e. kamikaze A-Wing Pilot, pretty much everyone in the Cantina Bar at some point), and I feel like at least a few characters were given backstories that fit with the times (I swear there were at least a few gay characters towards the end of the EU). Of course Star Wars EU created the counterpoint of too much retroactive writing making the plot completely incomprehensible at times because occasionally there'd be namedrops and you'd have no idea what they're talking about unless you knew it was one of those people. I don't necessarily think it's wrong for JKR to do the same for Harry Potter, it sounds like she doesn't mind going "Yeah, sure, okay" to these things because now that the books are done, she has a little more wiggle room to write background information on characters if people really want them.

[QUOTE=God of Ashes;46745674]aren't wiccans like witches and shit though[/QUOTE] I'd imagine the Salem witch academy is where they go

I thought Goblet of Fire was interesting because it was the only one that really discussed the international-ness of Wizardry (like the American witches at the World Cup), even though I liked that book the least out of them. I figured there's probably some sort of smaller Wiccan school, but at the same time I kind of imagine them being less distinct from the Muggles interested in the spirituality side of it.

[QUOTE=NiandraLades;46747547]I'll be honest, having authors explain this sort of thing about characters outside of the actual book always makes me raise an eyebrow slightly and feels like super weak representation in my opinion[/QUOTE] JK Rowling has said in the past that she has put way more thought into the backgrounds of the characters and the world than she needed for the books. I don't think she did it as a stunt to cram as much cultural representation in as possible, she just makes up a backstory for minor characters. This whole article is about a series of twitter posts, it's not like she held a press release and declared Hogwarts to be multicultural. A person literally just asked her if there were any Jewish wizards and she replied, that's all. [editline]21st December 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=itak365;46764404]I don't necessarily think it's wrong for JKR to do the same for Harry Potter, it sounds like she doesn't mind going "Yeah, sure, okay" to these things because now that the books are done, she has a little more wiggle room to write background information on characters if people really want them.[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure it's not retroactive, the Jewish wizard she named was called Anthony Goldstein. Sounds like a pretty Jewish name to me and she created him as one of the original 40 wizards so she probably put more thought into them than any others.

[QUOTE=sgman91;46758834]I've honestly never understood this. If a movie has a good plot I couldn't care less what color the character's color is, mine or otherwise. It seems to me that a person would need to be pretty racist to not be able to enjoy a movie as much because the people had a different skin color.[/QUOTE] It pissed me off to no end when people got upset that that one character in the Hunger Games was black.