Intentional or not, Lucas managed to create several fictional alien species in TPM who were basically just laundry lists of racist sterotypes. (Jar-Jar, the Not!Asians, the Not!Jew who owned Anakin & his mother, and so on.)

I'm not saying he has a responsibility to not be an ignorant dumbass, but it sure wouldn't hurt.

ITA. I used Lucas as an example becuase I thought that the plausibility line was veeerry blurry.

ITA, also.

well, it's kind of like the memfault!trade aliens in Phantom Menace. Lucas said that he did not intend for them to be seen as Asian, but pretty much everyone saw it.

Didn't they have almond eyes?

I mean, its not a big reach to say "those guys are Asian" when they have almond eyes.

To say that big nosed characters are Jewish is application of a stereotype, but to say that almond-eyed characters are Asian is more actually descriptive.

JKR's species have enough depth to give her plausible deniability, at the very least.

Not only that, she has a racial analogy with the mud blood thing and the Wizards attitudes towards Muggles.

I think there's a fundamental difference between using traits that stereotypically are assigned to one group, as JKR did with the Goblins and the Jews, but with very little textual evidence that it's meant to be an allegory, and what Lucas did with Jar Jar Binks, which almost directly referenced a series of bad racial stereotypes.

Certainly, you can look at JKR's Goblins and say "Wow. That's meant to be Jews," and make a pretty good case for it, but it doesn't seem to be intentional and you can probably make a case the other way, too. There's no way you can look at Jar Jar and see something other than a race relations timebomb waiting to happen. (Naturally, the kids loved him.)

the Not!Jew who owned Anakin & his mother

Huh. I always thought Greek for some reason. But then I never see the parallels that other people say are obvious.

I never thought it was intentional. (I don't even think the Lucas example was intentional.)

Potterverse Goblins just made me think of generic fantasyverse Dwarves. Perhaps a side effect of having read a lot more fantasy than history.

Potterverse Goblins just made me think of generic fantasyverse Dwarves.

That's it. Goblins in most fantasy books that I have read are barely sentient beings. I was thinking that they were really smart for goblins. But you are right, they are like Dwarves.

I found it fascinating to read people's reactions to realising the protagonists of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys were black.

Ah, crap. Wish I could remember this; I may have just been expecting them to be black, because - Anansi. Seems like a fair assumption. But when other characters' skin tone is referenced, then you tend to assume the person doing the noticing doesn't belong to that group - so when it's mentioned that some bloke is white, then you assume the noticer isn't. Or whatever. Huh. Regardless, I definitely don't remember any moment of OMGWTFSkinTone!!!

GC, I just want to say that I'm sorry if I helped to make you feel piled-on. (In that non-porny way.) And ditto to Megan.

wrt the Pureblood/Mudblood/Halfblood thing - I'm a bit divided on whether I see this as racial. I mean, I kind of do, because - duh. But also it really pings me as a class thing. Which may be partly because the purebloods tend to have Latinate names.

wrt heteronormativity - I really don't think Rowling was trying to create a non-heteronormative world. If she was, she sure as shit failed abysmally. imho.

Ellen Kushner's Riverside - nonheteronormative. Cap'n Jack's Cardiff Torchwood - nonheteronormative. Tanya Huff's Quarters Books - nonheteronormative (and default spearcarrier-types are generally women). Otherwise, most every book, movie or show I can think of is heteronormative. Including QAF.

Yeah, it would have rocked my socks if she'd had Neville or Luna or Ginny or Ron or somebody turn out to be gay. Because, yes, she did a pretty good job of including most flavours of kids in there, without hitting you over the head with their ethnicity - would have been good, as romance and naughty thoughts start impinging on them all, if this had included some same-sex pairings. (Neville/Draco - ah, that would have been nice. Or Seamus/Dean - could've bought that. Or Oliver Wood/Percy. Aw! Oliver Wood could have helped give Percy a kick up the ass and get him to come and reunite with the family! That would have been lovely and apposite.)

On a vaguely related note, I just read Robin McKinley's DragonHaven, in which the grumpy Snape-like bloke turns out to be gay, and chills the fuck out a lot when he actually gets a boyfriend, and that made me beam.

Fay, thank you for mentioning Dragonhaven! I had no idea that McKinley had a new book out. Very exciting.