Hermione? That’s black girl magic

This is a jar full of major characters 

Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories. 

We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls. 

Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left. 

This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left. 

And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left. 

And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right. 

Until these are the bowls. 

Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other. 

This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl. 

This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference. 

This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.

The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss. 

This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world. 

I mean, imagine your party guests arrive

Oh my god they are adorable!

And they see their bowls

But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.

I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?

But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat. 

And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant. 

And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.

*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*

FUCK YES THIS WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT FOR SO MANY PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND

this is a really great way of explaining representation. Note that it also applies to LGBTQ, disabled, and neuro-atypical characters, as well as any other minority or oppressed group.

consider: polynesian + latino percy

ok unpopular opinion but when we praise rick riordan’s current use of diverse characters, especially with regards to race, i don’t think we give enough of a shoutout to the kane chronicles

i get it, the kane chronicles is like neglected step-sibling of the percy jackson and heroes of olympus fandom, magnus chase is not nearly as successful as PJO/HoO and its still more popular than the kane chronicles but can we recognize how important of an experimental time period it was for rick as an author re: characterization

if you’re one of the slew of people who have read riordan’s other works but not kane chronicles, the two protagonists, Carter and Sadie Kane are siblings of mixed race. Carter has dark skin, dark curly hair, and Egyptian features like their black father, but Sadie has light skin, blonde hair, and traditionally European features like their white mother. Riordan uses this dynamic throughout the series to bring attention to racial microaggressions and blatant anti-black sentiments that we harbor intentionally or not in the modern world.

For example, in the books, there are several times when people assume by looking that them, that Carter and Sadie aren’t related, and both siblings expression their aggravation, because Sadie has every right to her Egyptian heritage as Carter does, just as Carter has the same right to feel connected to his mother and her side of the family as Sadie does, but because they look like polar opposites, they aren’t given the same treatment.

Additionally, Carter and Sadie’s mother dies before the start of the series, and afterwards, the two are split up, as sadie is taken from her father by her maternal grandparents (so white theyre sour cream) who err on hatred for carter, their father, and their paternal uncle (black) in a very dursley-ish sort of way and its hinted to be at least partially racially based, while Carter is allowed to remain with his father. By the time Carter reunites with Sadie at the beginning of the series, he and his father have been forced to stay away from her for so long that they basically have to relearn each other all over again. Meanwhile, their grandparents lash out at Carter for no reason other than the fact that he exists. (also its been 2 years i think since i read the first book so this might be wrong, but sadie also has some misconceptions about her father’s relationship to her because she seems to feel that he left her with her grandparents on purpose because he didn’t care about her the way he cared about carter some of which i think we hear straight from the grandparents mouth. but the reader sees this from another perspective because we know it physically pained their father to be away from sadie, and any implication otherwise plays into the “absent black father narrative”)

Idk i personally think developing the constant reoccurring mention to carter and sadie being different physically is like part of what helped him get out of the box of chronically not mentioning character races that nearly all white authors get stuck in, that and there was also probably a generous push from the “grover cant be black” outcry after the first movie and you can think im crazy for saying it but the fact of the matter is that the first kane chronicles book and The Lightning Thief movie both came out in 2010

so anyway if you have read the kane chronicles pls make an effort to celebrate its diversity the way you would celebrate other books of rick riordan, like including sadie kane in your gifsets about badass WOC or drawing attention to Zia and Anubis/Walt when you talk about love interests of main protagonists (re: annabeth, piper, and alex)

thanks good talk everyone

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Lgbtq+ hufflepuffs are important

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Hufflepuffs with disabilities are important

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