Slytherin Ideology, in context

[ohneill_2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 100355

"Eric Oppen" <technomad at i...> wrote:
> And _how_ often do you find the children of wizards and witches 
> raised in the Muggle world? Considering how difficult wizards and 
> witches are to kill, and how long-lived they are, I'd be willing to 
> bet longish odds that Tom Riddle and Harry Potter are about the 
> only examples of such a situation in centuries.  Muggle-born wizards 
> and witches, OTOH, are apparently not that uncommon.

I have no idea how common either type of child is in the WW, but my 
point still stands.  We have never heard Harry get insulted for 
having been raised by Muggles.  Draco and his friends pick on Harry 
for all sorts of reasons, but *not* because of where he was raised.  
They call Hermione a M*dblood, but they do not have an analogous slur 
for Harry.  Thus, I think we can safely conclude that it *is* blood 
that is the basis for their contempt.


> And, again, _we don't know_ how dodgy a rep Muggle-born or Muggle-
> raised wizards and witches have.  All it would take would be a few 
> really spectacular examples of such gone bad to give them all a bad 
> reputation.  *snip*

I'm sorry to snip so much, but I really wanted to respond to just 
this point, because I've seen a lot of these types of arguments on 
this board, and I've always been tempted to respond.  I'm not picking 
on you; rather, I'm responding categorically to everyone who has made 
this argument before.

Of course you're correct that we don't know what happened during 
parts of the story that have not been told (or during eras that 
precede the story that we have not been told about).  Sure, it's 
theoretically possible that Muggle-raised children a thousand years 
ago raised havoc, and that's why the Slytherins today hate them.  
Similar arguments get made by some of the SHIPpers; for example: "We 
don't really know what Hermione and Viktor's relationship was like, 
because we don't know what they were doing when Harry wasn't 
around."  Well yeah, that's true, but what does one do with that bit 
of insight?  We also don't know what Ron and Pansy Parkinson's 
relationship is really like, because we don't know what *they're* 
doing when Harry's not around, either...right?

I guess my point is this: your argument about the Slytherin ideology 
seems to be, essentially, "Their views might be justified, because we 
don't know what might have happened throughout history to give rise 
to them, so we shouldn't judge them for hating Mu*bloods."  To that, 
my only response can be: Yeah, you might be right, and if you are, 
we'll find out.  But right now, there's no canon to support it, and 
I'm pretty far from convinced.

> Firstly, we don't know how Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws feel about 
> such things---we see very little of them, thanks to a _certain_ 
> person who is less curious than I'd be in his shoes.  Secondly, we 
> really know little of the Slytherins' POV other than via Draco 
> Malfoy...who is someone I do not necessarily view as a bubbling 
> fountain of truth and enlightenment.  The gods know that there are 
> enough sub-groups in Gryffindor house, so why should the Slyths be 
> different?  

True; we don't know a lot about the other houses.  But we do know 
that they mingle, and the Slytherins seem not to.  Slytherin was the 
only house not represented in DA, and by the end of DA, I think we 
can assume that the members (of all three houses) developed a healthy 
respect for Harry.  There may be *members* of each house that are 
suspicious of Muggle-born (or raised) children, just as there may be 
individual Slytherins who do not share the view, but neither view 
appears to be the majority view in the WW.

--Cory