Democracy and Prejudice in the WW ( with slight tinge of FF)

[Ebony <selah_1977@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50599

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Ali <Ali at z...>" <Ali at z...> 
wrote:
> > 
>  This is an interesting point. I don't think politics (in the sense 
> we would understand it) happens. I think that the wizarding 
community 
> is too small to have true democracy, and as all the major players 
> seem to know one another, I suspect that the MoM just gets chosen 
> according to who the great and good feel would be best at 
> representing them with Muggle leaders. Which would explain why he 
> would go and visit Hagrid personally.  


Great topic, Tom... Heidi, Michelle, and Ali, thanks for your 
responses, as I'm writing a paper on HP and postcolonialism.  So 
stuff like this fascinates me.

Now, admittedly I ought to know more about the UK system of 
governance, as I'm majoring in nineteenth-century British lit, but I 
don't.  So I have a little question...

The Minister of Magic wouldn't really be the equivalent to the Prime 
Minister, is he?  I mean, Britain has lots of other ministers and 
ministries... after all, wasn't it the Minister of Culture who 
recently denounced rap and hip-hop?  (Smacks him *soundly*--evil, 
wicked man!)

Rather, I've always seen the Ministry as a "hidden" branch of the 
UK's Muggle government that has an unusual degree of autonomy, but 
that *someone* in the Muggle government secretly knows about them.  I 
can't remember if I've got canon evidence for this, or if it's just a 
gut feeling, but I think that wizards and witches are still subjects 
of the Queen.  *Especially* since there doesn't seem to be a 
completely parallel wizarding world that is autonomous, but just ind. 
separate institutions.

And now that we know there's a wizarding equivalent to the UN, the 
International Confederation, I wish to point out that it is very 
likely that wizarding governance varies greatly from country to 
country.  In the AU I created for my fanfiction, the Americans have a 
Department of Magic, based in DC (but with branch offices in Salem, 
Mass., New Orleans, and on Indian reservations), the African wizards 
have a tribal system of council governance that I called the Asili--
"society" in Swahili, and the Chinese are far more oligarchic than I 
thought the British would be.  I have no idea what JKR has in mind, 
but I am assured from her writing that she realizes the world is a 
very diverse place, and that wizarding traditions differ from culture 
to culture.

I do think that the Brits occupy the position in the wizarding world 
that the Brits occupied in the Muggle world 100 years ago, however--
we've discussed it a bit here before, but I tend to think that the 
Voldemort and Grindelwald things were worldwide affairs and affects 
wizards and witches to some degree everywhere.  I cannot see Tom 
Riddle's ambitions stopping at the Channel, or the Bosporus, myself. 

Another thing that I've found interesting is the wizarding world's 
idea of race and ethnicity.  It's my theory that one of the reasons 
why no one seems to put much stock into race in the books is because 
the modern concept of race and racism (I know this is hard to 
believe, but bear with me) is a construct that came into play well 
after the 1600s schism between the wizarding and Muggle worlds.  In 
fact, you can see it in the British canon--only look at the 
Romantics' view of the racialized other and compare it to the 
Victorians.  As recently as the 1700s, Africa, the unexplored 
stretches of the Americas, the Near and the Far East were seen as 
mystical and wonderful... but by the late 1800s, writers like Conrad, 
Kipling, Rider Haggard, Henty, etc. portrayed non-European places as 
strange or the heart of hell.  ("The horror, the horror!")  And 
the "savage" (read:  racialized Other) went from being noble and 
fascinating to utterly demonic.

So the Ministry of Magic is just another ministry, and it happens to 
be a very British ting... not to replace the Prime Minister as far as 
magic is concerned, but as an appointed official under him.  How 
they're appointed, I don't know... and whether the terms run along 
with Muggle ones is doubtful (as from what I know of the UK, Fudge 
seems more Thatcher than Blair or the guy who was Minister between 
those two).

Which makes me wonder if there are witch and wizard MPs or local 
council members.

I'd really like the Brits to weigh in more on this.

--Ebony