i know on my old blog i spoke briefly about harry coming to america, doing the bed and breakfast thing, and discovering the culture here. i talked about him discovering nas and lauryn and even pac, and how it would shape his outlook, but i didn’t go in depth. i was thinking about it today ( because i just bought my lauryn tickets even though i had to get actual seats because my ass gon be fresh outta surgery that week ), and i just wanted to speak on what that music and the culture does for him.
up until then, harry is very shortsighted. even during the war, he knows what he has to do and what his goal is, but he basically only works with what is in front of him ( hence his lack of impulse control and avid recklessness ). and that sort of works in his favor because i think if he would have focused more on the future, he would have realized pretty quickly that death was in his cards without a doubt.
but anyway, so harry gets to north america, and he learns about a culture more like his father’s ancestors. the afro-caribbean and black culture, the tension that surrounds these people, the treatment he gets not only being colored but being a foreigner etc. and he gets thrown into this world of the music of literal black american role models / heroes / storytellers etc. and he realizes that people like him but not like him are still struggling every single day. the fact he defeated voldemort didn’t stop other forms of oppression. he saved everybody in a sense, but he didn’t save them from everything, and i think he comes to see that.
it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. it feeds into this sense of “what now?” for him. why he doesn’t go become an auror or work in the ministry or stay in london. because what else is there for him to do? he served his purpose. he finished serving this sentence he was born into. he saved the world, solved the problem, right? but learning that there are still other horrors in the world he can’t actively combat on his own, it’s really disheartening because now his sacrifices and his victory seem so small and insignificant.
but it’s good for him in the way that he realizes there is more to the world than the wizarding world. it gives him a lot of insight about his childhood prior to finding out he was a wizard, the way people treated him at school, how it added to the way that the dursleys treated him etc. like… our music as black people ( other POC too but definitely black people ) is vital to our reflections, our upbringing, our expression of self etc. and harry being able to immerse himself in that is vital to his recovery, to his healing, and it gives him a chance to realize he is so much more than a wizard, than the boy who lived. he gets to explore and learn about his other identities as well as learn to defend and take care of himself in an antiblack world.
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
germansingergirl
gummygunk
dededos
