Scapegoating Slytherin (was:Punishing Draco )

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 144107

Pippin:
> Sytherin was surely mistaken to think that blood was a guarantee of
> virtue, but IMO, the other Founders were just as wrong to think it
> was guaranteed by egalitarianism, or intelligence or even courage.
> So to me it's elitism based on false criteria that has caused the 
> separation of the Houses, and they all need to lower their pride and 
> admit that there are few in any House who can be trusted with power.
<snip>
> I don't think JKR is saying that racism is worse than other kinds of
> elitism based on false criteria. I think she used it because it's
> very easy for us Western liberal types to recognize that it's false.
> But I think the wizarding world is largely ignorant of the change in
> Muggle thinking that happened post 1945, a year which Wizards seem
> to remember mostly for the fall of Grindelwald, so it's unfair to 
> judge them as if they should know better.  

Jen: I've been thinking about this and decided no, I don't think JKR 
is saying all discrimination is equal in Potterverse. Besides hanging 
several major plot points on this issue, as well as providing 
motivation for many of the characters, she chose to tell a story which 
involves deeply-ingrained, centuries-old discrimination based on blood 
purity, and the horrors which have resulted from that view. Not only 
that, but she created many characters whose lives have been destroyed 
by discrimination based on race, rather than any other form of 
elitism. 

It's true that all the founders were wrong to think that their 
criteria was a guarantee of virtue, as Pippin stated upthread, but I 
don't think that makes all criteria equally wrong. We discussed 
upthread how Hufflepuff could be thrown in with the others since their 
virtue is egalitarianism. Well, here's the perfect example of when "I 
teach the lot and treat them just the same" goes astray. To say all 
types of discrimination are equally offensive to humanity is 
egalitarianism in its worst form. The Hufflepuff creed is no longer a 
virtue but a vice, because it allows people to feel complacent, to 
avert their eyes to heinous crimes, to say that ethnic cleansing is no 
worse than any other vice humanity engages in.

Much as I'm all for unity and the symbolism of the four houses 
representing the four elements, something HAS gone deeply wrong in the 
WW, and Slytherin house has been more closely connected with the 
crimes than any of the other houses. I still don't think Salazar 
Slytherin *intended* that in the beginning, and believe we need to 
know more about the Founder's split to understand where it all began. 
I also don't believe for a mintue that all children sorted into 
Slytherin are examples of humanity at its worst, they are being 
victimized by this oppression as much as children from other houses. 
How it will all sort out I don't have a clue, but I do think a major 
theme is the horrific fallout from race discrimination, specifically.

Jen, denying her Hufflepuff instincts and taking a position.