Prejudice

[kattfirmin1]

No: HPFGUIDX 70530

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jenny_ravenclaw" 
<meboriqua at a...> wrote:
 > 
> Either way, it is a common motif in the history of prejudice and 
> racism for groups that are generally upper class or the majority 
to 
> think of others as dirty or bad.  Calling someone a Mudblood 
captures 
> that disturbingly well.
> 
> --jenny from ravenclaw *********************************

Jenny, while everything you said is VERY true, I'd like to add 
something.  Prejudice aren't just generally an upper class or 
majority problem, but a way to make an average, or not so average 
person feel more important.  It's an excuse one uses to dehumanize 
another.  In the US, slave traders and owners claimed that Africans 
weren't humans like they were, so the atrocities they commited were 
excusable. Native Americans weren't human because they had a 
different lifestyle than the colonists, so it was allowed to take 
their land and set kill them if they refused to move. Just like all 
the brainwashing propaganda by the Nazi's were a form of 
dehumanizing Jews and Gypsies.  Then, the average person could feel 
superier to them, more important. (And not feel guilty.)

Now, (to not be off topic), I think the same type of prejudice does 
exist very heavily in the wizarding world.  In both US and Europe, 
there were exstinsive witch hunts and whatnot.  Now, since JKR 
borrowed that peice of history in her books, (I think it was COS 
where Harry had to write why witch burnings weren't effective), and 
since the WW world is so secretive, we are to believe that in 
Potterville, witches and wizards have been persecuted for 
centuries.  Since they were subjected to that, some wizards felt 
pretty insignificant, and starting creating their own prejudices 
against others, to make themselves feel better.  People like Malfoy 
Sr. strikes me like that.  Someone who has to put others down to 
make themselves superier. (Can you imagine Malfoy's humiliation at 
having to hide from Muggles?)  And you're right, "Mudblood" is an 
excellent term JKR created to capture that prejudice.

Katrina