Potterverse Racism, & technology (Was: Why do 'purebloods' hate Muggles?)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 47786

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "James P. Robinson III" 
<jprobins at i...> wrote:
> As the clock struck 12:00 AM 12/2/2002 +0000, chthonia9 took 
pen in hand  and wrote:
> >I'm intrigued that no-one has taken up the last point I was
> >trying to make:  Given that a major theme in the books is that 
racism andprejudice are stupid and wrong, isn't this somewhat 
contradicted by the ways character traits seem to run in families 
in thePotterverse?

  Although one might expect there to be family cultures which 
would make sibling/offspring entry into the same school 
Housemore likely, even at eleven years old I'd expect individual 
traumas,sibling rivalries etc to have produced differing 
motivational drives.  (Should Percy Weasley not have been a 
Slytherin? ;-)  But it seems that bloodlines do indeed have a 
significance
<<


Jim:
> This is a large part of the point I was trying to make in my posts 
under the "Classist Hogwarts" re line.<<
> 

One thing that wasn't pointed out in this thread or in Jim's is that 
it would be easier to avoid racism and prejudice if there was no 
evidence at all that character traits can be handed down 
genetically or "in the blood" as the wizards would say.
 
 The loudest proponents of the contrary view in the Potterverse 
are of course Aunt Marge and Hagrid, both animal lovers and 
breeders. It's natural that they would generalize from their 
observations of animals to human beings, and yes, it's stupid. 
Maybe the Malfoys have "bad blood" and maybe they don't.

 But knowing whether the Malfoy preference for Slytherin is 
genetic or cultural doesn't tell us anything at all about what an 
individual Malfoy is like. Possibly some of them ended up in 
Slytherin even though the Hat thought they would do well 
elsewhere.   And if the Malfoy clan throws up a "white sheep" 
now and then, neither Hagrid nor Draco is  likely to mention it, 
even if they know. 

I don't see  that  the heritability of character traits and  the 
wrongness of racism and prejudice are connected. To say "all 
---- are alike" is hurtful, regardless of how much diversity there 
happens to be within a particular group. 

Harry really doesn't know much about the people in the other 
Houses. If he got to know them better, mightn't we find that in 
truth Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and even Slytherins are quite as 
diverse as the Gryffindors? 

Pippin