[HPforGrownups] Democracy and prejudice

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 50683

Ebony wrote:

> 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.

I'm not sure that this theory is tenable. I know that we're not supposed to
talk about muggle politics here, but I can't really see a muggle government
running the MoM, especially in the Lady (Voldemor)tina years! Most of the
functions would have been privatised (probably to that nice Mr Riddle and De
Atheaters plc) and what was left merged with the Ministries of Defence,
Nasty Secrets and Gunboat Diplomacy.

As I've posted elsewhere, I don't think that the MoM would comprehend or
understand the concept of a Prime Minister who was elected. They would have
gone for what they knew - the bureaucracy, and formed a link there. I
suspect that the link is a person in one of the central Whitehall
departments, probably the Cabinet Office, who is supposedly on secondment
from one of the other departments (no one ever thinks about exactly which
one...), does the job efficiently and unobtrusively, passes on any
information which the MoM needs to know about (eg if someone is thinking
about running a motorway through the middle of Diagon Alley) and is also
available if the MoM feels it appropriate to pass anything to the muggle
government. Parliaments come and go, the bureaucracy doesn't.

> 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

And here is another problem with having the MoM as part of the muggle
government - the fact that we know that the map of Wizard Europe is
different from the map of muggle Europe - Flanders, Sardinia, and
Transylvania are all mentioned in the books even though they aren't
independent Muggle states. So there's no straightforward match between them.

> 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.

She certainly does well by avoiding any sort of stance on the Wizard
equivalent of "Britain" and I think quite rightly.

But also she allows the implications for world history which flow from the
existence of wizardry. I think that the defining moment for wizards happened
when they realised that they had more in common with each other than with
their muggle neighbours, and that that happened a very long time ago. So
that they would not have been caught up in the mass displacements of
population which have come about in muggle history, simply because they
could and would have chosen to elude extermination, enslavement, ethnic
cleansing, etc.

Wizard West Africa was not denuded of population by the slave trade. Wizard
India was not ruled by the Empire. And so on.

> 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

I think that the true schism came much earlier than this, the 17th century
was just the time that it was formalised.

> 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.

Whereas in WW, there does not seem to be any concept of a "3rd World", of
the legacy of Empire, or of any sort of racial dimension.

Or indeed any sort of religious one either.

Cheers

Ffred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri