Scapegoating Slytherin - The Moral Majority

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 144019

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "a_svirn" <a_svirn at y...> wrote:
>
> zgirnius:
> >
> > First, the requirement (such as it is) stated by the Sorting
> > Hat, which ought to know, is not that they be bigoted, but 
> > that they be pureblood. The two are not equivalent, as we 
> > have seen from numerous  canon examples of non-bigoted 
> > purebloods.
> > 
> a_svirn:
> If the admission to Slytherin House restricted or at least 
> ideally should be restricted to the pureblood (and according
> to the Hat it is), it means discrimination. Depends on how you
> see "the blood problem" in the WW it may be racial or social 
> discrimination. Bigotry is just another (milder) term for it.
> Those purebloods who are not bigots obviously choose other 
> houses, don't they? It's all about choices, after all.
>

bboyminn:

Sorry, this might have already been covered in the discussion; I
haven't been following it that close. But Slytherin IS NOT resticted
to PUREBLOOD. Snape is mixed blood, Voldemort himself is mixed blood.
So, I don't think Slytherin himself made pure-blood an absolute
criteria of admitance into Slytherin House. 

True he did not want to let muggles and muggle borns into Hogwarts,
and certainly not into his house, but that was primarily for security
reasons. Salazar didn't hate muggle-borns, he just didn't trust them.
The school was founded in a time of great persecution, and any leak of
the location or existance of the school could have meant the end of
the wizard world, or at the very least, been extremely dangerous to
the wizard world. 

Even mixed-blood families that had a few generation in the wizard
world would have a clear understanding of it and a vested interest in
protecting it. But people newly introduced to the wizard world, in
other words muggle-borns, would not have the strong innate desire to
protect it. In fact, they could even be easily persuaded by religious
zealots to reveal the secret of the wizard world.

We must remember that starting a Wizarding School itself was extremely
dangerous. It seems fair and reasonable to suppose that up until this
point individual wizards took on one or more apprentices to train
them. The problem was the each wizard couldn't train very many people,
BUT they could do it in relative secrecy. Further if their individual
secret were reveal, only they and their apprentices would be at risk.
The rest of the wizard world would be safe.

Now however, they are proposing to bring every young wizard in their
domain to a single location for training. If Hogwarts were discovered,
  several generations of wizards could be wiped out in one stroke. So
Salazar was certainly justified in his fear of muggles and muggle-borns.

Yes, I have no doubt that Salazar favored pureblood, but I think his
real prejudice and mistrust was against 'freshly-minted' muggle-borns.
The fact that the Sorting Hat, who carries on the founder's desires
and preferences, still admits people of mixed-blood into Slytherin
House supports my position. 

Later in history, as so often happens, people have taken Salazar's
justificable mistrust of freshly-minted muggle-borns and twisted into
their own Nazi-like hatred of anything and anyone that is not
pureblood. Fanatics have been doing this for centuries. Christian
fanatics have kill coutless people in a misguided pervertion of
Christianity. Muslim fanatics, now and in the past, have perverted
Muslim teachings to serve their own selfish end to the death and
detriment of many innocent people. Wizard Pureblood fanatics have done
the same thing with their own pervertion of Salazar Slytherin's beliefs.

Slytherins aren't bad; /fanatic/ Slytherins are. I remind everyone
again against stereotyping /most Slytherins/ because we have never
seen /most Slytherins/ in this series of books. We see the Slytherins
who get into Harry's face, and they certainly aren't a majority.
Though I will admit, that JKR as the author is trying to give the
false impression of Slytherins, but by her own admission, Slytherin
are not universally bad. How, or if, this aspect will play out in the
final story, I don't know. Perhaps, it is a red-herring, we are
suppose to take the few Slytherins we see are being representative of
all Slytherin, only for it to simply not hold up in the end.

Regardless, you will never convince me that all Slytherins or even a
vast majority of Slytherins are bad based on the small sampling we are
allowed in the books.

Just passin it along.

Steve/bboyminn