VWII and WWII (was Marietta and Hermione)

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 120998


Charme wrote:
"With all due respect for your opinion, I wish you hadn't stated for
fact the issue was getting muddied in the manner you did, unless you
mean muddied toward the original Marietta discussion."

Del replies:
Actually yes, that was what I meant, but I sure chose my words poorly.
It looks like I insulted you twice in a single day or a couple of days
IIRC, for which I'm really sorry! (And I'm glad I'm not a House Elf,
or it would take me days to recover from the punishment I would have
to inflict on myself ;-)

Charme wrote:
"law or no law, there is an undercurrent that's hard in my mind to
ignore and I don't think it's limited to insiders in the manner you've
suggested."

Del replies:
In fact, I agree with you. My insider remark should have concerned
only the Arthur and Fudge example you gave.
Even the way people react to the insult "Mudblood" smells of guilty
conscience to me. If people really didn't agree that Muggleborns are
inferior, they wouldn't get into such an uproar when someone utters
the insult : they would just dismiss it as stupid and prejudiced.
There's also the fact that anti-Muggleborn prejudice is still openly
practiced in some parts of the world, like Eastern Europe. We know
that Durmstrang doesn't accept Muggleborns.
And there's a general feeling that permeates the whole WW that wizards
are better, more gifted than Muggles. Even Muggle-loving Arthur
displays that attitude. Not to mention the way wizards react to
Squibs: they are made fun of and casually dismissed. They are *very
obviously* not equal members of the wizarding society, simply because
they are not magical. This implies that Muggles, who not only aren't
magical, but who weren't even born inside the WW, are considered even
worse.

Charme wrote:
"Frankly, with as little as we're supposed to see LV in the next book
(he likes his henchmen to do his work as I remember a JKR quote), he
almost appears not as important (at the moment anyway) as what's
happening in the WW society."

Del replies:
I completely agree. This is why I was trying to argue that the
apparent rise of racism in the WW cannot be considered as a clue about
the return of LV. Racism is inherent to the wizarding mentality, it's
not something that LV created. LV is the result of the wizarding
racism, not the other way around. If there had been no pureblood
superiorists (?) when LV came around, he could never have become the
leader of the anti-Muggle and anti-Muggleborn cause. Just like
Hitler's racist theories wouldn't have taken hold in a society that
wouldn't have been prejudiced already. Hitler and LV became big
because people were ready to support them.

Charme wrote:
"Each book we find there is more prejudice from wizards against
another group, and the Ministry has already passed some laws and acts
to control those other races! The progression of prejudice and racism
appears to be growing in the WW just as it did in Germany prior to
WW2. One has to wonder even if LV didn't return and given there have
been other seemingly "racial" wars in the WW (Binns & his History of
Magic class, you know) in the past, history might have been doomed to
repeat itself anyway."

Del replies:
Exactly. It is very obvious that LV could only be reborn if someone
was willing to do what was needed to ressucitate him, and that he can
become big again only if enough people support him. It's the
prejudiced, hateful wizards that "make" LV, not the other way around
(well, up to a point : once LV's army becomes big enough and such
things as Imperius become widespread, things start being quite different).
I'm not sure I agree with what you say concerning the progression of
prejudice and racism in the WW, though. As you say, the WW seems to
have always been a pretty racist place, with quite a lot of racial
wars. So I'm not sure the WW is "growing" more prejudiced those days.
I think it might just be that Harry is seeing more and more of it. The
anti-werewolf prejudice, for example, always existed, since we're told
that Lupin got lucky that DD was made Headmaster just before he turned
11, otherwise he would not have been able to attend Hogwarts. And even
so, Lupin and the staff had to keep the secret very tightly. Same with
Hagrid being half-giant (I've always wondered if Dippet and the
Hogwarts staff knew about Hagrid's mother, somehow I doubt it).
So I don't think the WW is growing more racist. I think it was always
racist. Maybe things got slightly better after VWI, because people
were feeling bad about what their prejudice had brought about. But
now, time has passed, and people are going straight back to what has
been their behaviour for centuries. Which of course makes the rise of
LV or another such evil wizard unavoidable eventually.

Charme wrote:
"Where does the line get drawn between having tendencies toward a
specific racial mantra (Fudge), being a sympathizer or supporter to
such view (Mrs Black) and then being classified as racist? (LV, The
Lestranges) This isn't a question I can answer BTW,it's one of those
morality and value questions each person can answer for themselves. I
will say this, for myself and only myself,  racial tendencies and
belief can be just as destructive as outright action or portrayal of
that belief."

Del replies:
Which is why even Arthur makes me uncomfortable. He obviously loves
the Muggles, but he also quite evidently IMO doesn't consider them as
equal to the wizards. *Nobody* in the WW considers the Muggles as
equal to the wizards, *not even the Muggleborns themselves*. Because
the Muggles aren't magical, they are considered as *inherently
inferior* to the wizards. Not different : inferior. This to me is akin
to considering blind people, or deaf people, as inferior because they
can't see or hear. Just look at the kind of remarks Arthur or the
Muggle studies books make about Muggles : they don't praise the
Muggles' achievements for what they are inherently, but because they
are such ingenious ways of replacing magic. By doing this, they imply
that all the Muggles spend their time and energy doing is trying to
create a substitute for magic, which is not only completely false (how
could the Muggles create a substitute for something they don't even
know exist?), but is terribly WW-centered, and by consequence
prejudiced. To me it's like saying that blind people's hyper-developed
sense of touch is such a marvelous thing because it is such a brave
attempt at compensating for what they don't have : vision. IMO a
hyper-developed sense of touch is a marvelous thing in and of itself,
and I admire whoever is willing to develop such a talent, whatever
their motive might be. I do not consider blind people to be inferior
to me. I have one ability they lack, many of them have developed
another ability way beyond anywhere I ever will, and apart from that
we all have our diverse likenesses and differences. Blind people are
different from me on a very restricted number of points, but overall
we are perfectly equal human beings.

But the wizards don't see things that way. They have made magical
ability their paramount differentiating trait, and they judge everyone
and everything according to that trait. On top come all the powerful
wizards, then all the talented ones, then all the normal ones, then
all the less-talented ones, then the Squibs, and finally the Muggles.
The Muggleborns then become a problem because they don't have a fixed
place in that hierarchy. They are born at the very bottom of it, then
at age 11 they suddenly jump over the Squibs, and as time passes some
of them climb the ladder, sometimes all the way to the top. For a
racist, this is as disconcerting and unacceptable as, say, a kid who
would be born white in a Black family, spends his childhood among the
Black community, but is then allowed into a white school at age 11,
becomes a ruler over "truly-whites", and marries a girl from a
"truly-white" family. He has by then become an equal to
"truly-whites", and yet he is still technically Black because his
parents were Black. For those "truly-white" racists, he will never be
an equal, because he was born inferior.

So I think that the WW will keep being racist and having to endure
racist wars, for as long as they will keep magic as their grading
quality. They will be able to do away with racism only when they
realise that magic is just an ability like any other, and that they
shouldn't judge each other and the Muggles on that ability only. They
need a whole new moral system, where the truly human qualities become
the important factors, where they are human beings before being
wizards. But this will never happen, because magic is the very reason
the MW and the WW are separated, so there's no way the wizards are
ever going to stop considering magic as their primordial, defining
quality.

There will always be another LV.

Del