It's "blood" that counts (Was: wizard geneology - Genius or Baloney?)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148287

Potioncat wrote:
<snip>
> Hagrid doesn't like Muggles. <snip> He's the type of person who
might end up saying something like, "Muggles are so stupid (crude,
dishonest fill in the blank)! Of course, your parents aren't like 
that, Hermione." 
> 
> He may actually like a Muggle or a Mugggleborn, but in general
expects someting inferior from Muggles as a group. Mrs. Black on the
other hand, would have nothing to do with any Muggle or Muggleborn. 
Hagrid wouldn't bait a Muggle for the heck of it, but wouldn't 
hesitate to use magic on one.

Carol responds:
So are you arguing that his prejudice is based on the absence of magic
rather than the absence of magical blood, and that somehow makes it
better than Mrs. Black's, if only because he doesn't scream his
insults as soon as the Squib or Muggle enters his presence? Granted,
he refrains from calling a Muggleborns "Mudbloods," suggesting that he
doesn't view their blood as polluted, but he would certainly consider
 the Muggle *parents* inferior even while acknowledging their
*child's* magical abilities. And surely the use of magic against a
Muggle, especially a child, is worse than calling a Muggleborn (who
has the power to defend herself against more than mere words) a
"Mudblood." It's as if he viewed women as inferior and hesitated to
use sexual slurs against them but did not hesitate to take advantage
of his greater physical strength. That's hypocrisy at best.

Or, if that's a flawed analogy, I fail to see how it's better to
insult a person for being nonmagical (a Squib or Muggle) than to
insult their blood. Maybe the difference is simply that Hagrid's
prejudice is not as maniacal as Mrs. Black's (at least the portrait
version of her, which is all we're allowed to see). He has likeable
qualities and she has none, so maybe it's easier to excuse him. 

Potioncat wrote:
> Mrs. Black doesn't like someone if they are Muggleborn, or
half-blood just on principle. Phineas wasn't complaining that
Mundungus was a Half-blood. He was complaining that Mundungus had
stolen from the house and he used "Half-blood" in the same way Hagrid
used "nag." (Not that I'm excusing it.) If he learns that Snape killed
DD he might exclaim, "that traitorous half-blood!" even though he
didn't hold the half-blood status against Snape before.
> 
Carol responds:
Or maybe Phineas just assumes that with Snape's obvious intelligence
and talents, he must be a pureblood? I like Phineas Nigellus, but he
*is* using "half-blood" as a term of abuse, and I really don't see how
that's much better than "Mudblood." If he knows that Snape is a
half-blood but refrains from mentioning it when he thinks that Snape
is a good guy but uses it against him when he learns that Snape killed
DD, wouldn't that make him a hypocrite, not regarding Snape but
regarding his choice of insults? (BTW, I don't expect anything of the
sort to happen, because Phineas has witnessed a great many
conversations between Snape and DD and would consequently know a lot
more than Harry does about their relationship. I only hope that JKR
puts that knowledge to use in Book 7.)
> 
> Potioncat: who thinks Phineas is Snape's great-great grandfater as 
> well as Sirius's.
>
Carol:
I thought when I read OoP that Snape must be on that tapestry
somewhere, but for some reason not in Harry's line of sight when he
looked at it with Sirius, and after HBP I'm almost certain of a
Prince/Black connection. Let's say that one of Phineas Black's
granddaughters married a Prince and produced Eileen. If Eileen had
married a pureblood, Severus would have shown up on the tapestry as "1
s" (one son) since Eileen's maiden name wasn't Black. But since she
married a Muggle, she would have been burned off the tapestry. Still,
if that's the case, we should be able to find her specific burn mark
when we see the complete tapestry. Even if I'm wrong about the exact
relationship, I do hope to see a clear connection between the Black
and Prince bloodlines. I'm guessing that the Princes were purebloods
with a family history of placement in Slytherin. That's the only
explanation I can come up with for Severus's precocious knowledge of
hexes. (If Eileen had been a boy named Edward with a Prince father and
a Black mother, would she have been Edward the Black Prince? ;-) )

Carol, hoping that Potioncat is right about Sirius and Severus being
at least third cousins but not sure how it would fit into the plot of
Book 7