Looking in the Cultural Mirror

How understanding race and culture helps us answer the question: "Who am I?"

by Jefferson Fish, Ph.D.

Harry Potter and the Racial Misunderstanding

A black character disappeared from a German Harry Potter. Why?

Published on January 7, 2010 by Jefferson Fish, Ph.D. in Looking in the Cultural Mirror

A few years ago, while I was struggling to learn German, I hit on the idea of reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in German. The book was so popular I knew I could find a German edition, and the sentences were sure to be shorter and the vocabulary easier than in most translated novels. By keeping the English version open alongside the German, I wouldn't have to stop every few words to look in a bilingual dictionary.

I labored through half a dozen chapters with more difficulty than a fourth grader, until I was brought up short by a missing sentence. "'Thomas, Dean,' a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table." was on page 122 in English but didn't exist in the German edition.

What could this possibly mean? I thought back on the book and couldn't remember any black characters. Was the point of the deletion to make Hogwarts into an all-white school in deference to German readers? I didn't want to believe it, given all the changes in Germany since World War II and the country's atonement for its Nazi past. But what other possible explanation could there be?

Find a Therapist

Search for a mental health professional near you.

Find Local:

I wrote to J. K. Rowling's literary agent to inquire, and eventually wound up with the following explanation. I assumed I had been reading the English language version, but actually I had been reading the American edition. There was also a British edition with a different title- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the United Kingdom. The sentence in question had been deleted by the British publisher in a space-saving edit; and the German edition was a translation of the British edition. In other words, the German translator had not deleted the sentence. He had never even seen it.

The moral of the story is that the world is a complicated place and it is difficult to know why things happen or what people's motivations are. It is a good idea to remain open to non-racial explanations for apparently racially-charged occurrences.

You can look it up in the Hogwarts curriculum.

Image source: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/buzzybee

1 Reader comments join the discussion here!

Tags: atonement, cultural misunderstanding, deference, few words, half a dozen, harry potter, j k rowling, j. k. rowling, literary agent, moral of the story, race, translation, world war ii

Previous Post

How Come Other Folks All Look Alike?

Next Post

What Are You?

Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D., is the author or editor of eleven books--most recently The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy--and numerous other publications on race, culture, therapy, drug policy, and other topics. He is a retired psychology professor.

more...