Racism? (was: Re: James the Berk?)

[anthyroserain]

No: HPFGUIDX 106156

Carol:

> Now, at the risk of having "Stupefy!" and "Silencio!" hurled at me,
> I'm going to propose that perhaps we're making more than we ought to
> of "Mudblood" by calling it "racist." What it indicates is not really
> quite equivalent to, say, the old U.S. Southern prejudice once held by
> many whites against blacks. On one level, it's more like an awareness
> of the presence or absence of royal blood; the purebloods see
> themselves as a kind of natural aristocracy which shouldn't intermarry
> with commoners (Muggleborns, and possibly half-bloods). It's not
> really a matter of "race" even though it certainly involves "blood."
> 
<snip>
> 
> Please don't send any viruses to my computer if you disagree with me!


Katie: 

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, Carol, but here's one response 
already... though I hope it's at least calm and rational :) (You're 
one of my favorite posters, I'm not sending any viruses to your 
computer! ;)

I don't think JKR is creating an alien universe. I think hers 
reflects ours, and while I wouldn't call her work an allegory, 
there's a great deal in the WW that we might recognize in our own.  

I've referred to the pureblood, erm, ideology as "racism" for some 
time, often to the confusion of my real-life, HP-reading friends
(This board is something else altogether!) 

So the purebloods have been taught to view another group as 
inferior? So were many deep-Southern whites until relatively 
recently. So were nineteenth-century Russians taught to see Jews as 
inferior. I don't see the point. Yes, it is a matter of upbringing-- 
and so is almost all prejudice. That doesn't excuse it. "Race", 
incidentally, may not quite be the right word, but it's often used 
by the blood-purification crowd in the HP novels, so the use of the 
word "racism" certainly has some precedent in canon.

The prejudice against non-purebloods in the WW doesn't usually come 
remotely close to the worst examples of prejudice in real life, but 
I think Voldemort's ideas quite clearly parallel real-life examples. 
I think JKR means them to; not that they should be read as a 
specific allegory, but rather that the situations in the novels can 
be seen in our own world. And as far as the slurs often used by the 
Slytherin gang go, there are certainly real-life examples of the 
same, and I definitely weould not consider them harmless.


-Katie
 who luckily restrained herself from analyzing "anti-werewolf 
legislation"