I'm desi and I HATE the desi!potters thing everyone on here seems to love. It's really offensive tbh. There's more to being Indian then just having brown skin you know....I wish people would instead create more fan works around the poc we already have in the series (the patil twins, cho, dean) instead of being corny with the desi potter crap. Everyone knows Harry was written to be white. I've sent this same ask to several fandom blogs and they all ignore me and continue to reblog those posts.
There’s more to being Indian then just having brown skin
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ thiiiiiiiiiissssss. related thoughts:
1) Really really agree that race is WAY more complicated than skin color and am always disappointed when fics change Harry’s skin color without exploring what that would mean for his life. Bc growing up black or brown in suburban England? That would have been huge and ignoring that perpetuates dangerous myths about colorblindness.
2) YES MORE WORKS AROUND THE POC WHO ARE ALREADY IN THE SERIES. They are such good characters and they are already there and I have permanent sideye going on about the lack of them in fic. Not just bc they’re POC, but because when you have characters who are as interesting as lee and padma and cho and dean, their absence is really noticeable and speaks loudly.
3) I think it’s really tricky - or at least I find it tricky to know what to do as a white person - when one person of color tells you something that other people of color have disagreed with about forms of representation. I hear you, anon, when you say you hate it and I really really agree with your reasons, but I’ve also seen POC say that they find it really heartening and meaningful to see racebent fanworks, so I’m reluctant to say that I’m not going to reblog racebending fanworks (or more specifically desi!potters stuff) (which I do agree is absolutely racebending, yes obvi harry was meant to be white in canon) when other people feel differently about it. I definitely don’t want to ignore what you’re saying (and am side-eyeing those who have on principle) and am not/am going to keep it in mind and will 100% reassess if I see other people and especially other fans of color saying similar things, and am verrrrry glad to be able to give this a platform, I just don’t want to make a change without knowing if only reblogging/supporting people in only reblogging Harry as white is something that would feel alienating or upsetting for other POC.
4) Are fic and art different here? Where do headcanons fall? I am much more troubled by fic with racebending wherein characters have dark skin but are otherwise unchanged than I am by art. To me, fic suggests that you’re getting insight into the characters’ inner lives/wants/needs/reactions, and most racebending fic completely omits any difference in characters’ interiority, which again, strikes me as perpetuating dangerous colorblindness by suggesting that there isn’t anything fundamentally different about living your life within racist systems that stereotype and denigrate and try to limit you from day one, when it has to make a difference, when the psychological/mental/emotional costs of racism are a huge fucking deal and inevitably affect people’s lives. Art, otoh, imo, doesn’t make those promises about interiority, and almost always puts you on the outside of characters’ experiences, and in constructing a different relationship between viewers and characters, does a different kind of work. I really don’t know where to place headcanons in there though and would be interested to hear what other people think.
and I also think JKR would not have named them James and Harry if they were desi have you seen the canon names there's Parvati and Padma Patil and Cho Chang
