#cassie5squared

  Then there are avalanches of info JKR has dropped on Ilvermony etc that I’m not ok with. I feel that it:

1) is too eurocentric and paternalistic 

2) ignores the political realities of cultures, races and traditions in America 

3) just kinda blows?I mostly ignore the whole Ilvermony thing- at least as far as being ‘the only school in America.’ Like, Naww... Your Euro-brand school is NOT the standard here. Sorry, I reject that. America has SO MANY cultures that were here LONG before your Euro-witch came in and took over with the other colonials. 

Addressing the clash between American and European cultures is very near and dear to my heart, and is a long-standing tradition on the Mexican side of my family. (My great Uncle Jorge González Camarenahas a lot of amazing paintings he did addressing this, that I highly recommend checking out!) 

JKR basically ignored this, and put in a very accidentally racist and super traditional british colonizer attitude/mindset they never try to work on problematic narrative of ‘primitive natives happily being ‘saved’ by white british culture’ that just riles me up. Like, stop trying to colonize everything and treat it like it’s ok. NO. STAHP. In general, I headcanon there are so many different ways of approaching magic, that there are really thousands and thousands of schools who teach different ways. There might only be 11 schools of magic that teach it like Hogwarts or whatever in the world- but I firmly reject the notion that those are the only schools and that’s a positive thing. It’s NOT a positive thing for there to be so little diversity.  I feel like JKR missed the boat HARD with how she tried to build up the American Magic stuff,  and just in general has a very ingrained british colonialist perspective that really tarnished how she has expanded the HP universe to other places. She has too much time and money on her hands to be so intellectually lazy.

If she had just written Ilvermony stuff as this one specific school’s history, it wouldn’t be an issue. The issue is how she decided to include native american culture- where she did like NO research at all- took the ‘fun cowboys and indians nature crap’ part of native american culture and applied it to her european stuff with the subtlety of Urban Outfitters. Cultural appropriation happening with the school actually would be historically accurate- so I’m actually completely ok with the narrative as it stands. 

The issue is SHE CREATED THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AT ILVERMONY, AND FRAMED IT AS A POSITIVE THING. Like, european bias happening is a totally accurate thing to happen historically- but she framed this like a 1896 narrative- “thank GOODNES them white people came in and made all those silly nature natives have a REAL school 8D” augh.

So yeah, JKR ... stop being such an ignorant racially/ethnically/culturally insensitive colonizer.