Individual issues and JKR (was Re: Snape and the "Chosen One" )

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 153360

zgirnius:
Nice post, Ginger! Very thought-provoking, and the general point is 
one I very much agree with. 

> Ginger:
> My personal soapbox, about which I posted here before HBP was JKR's 
> treatment of "inbred" people.  I *do* hate that term.  Hasn't 
someone 
> come up with a politically correct term for that yet?

zgirnius:
In parallel with the sort of parody of PC which labels the poor 
as 'monetarily challenged'...'ancestrally challenged'? <g>

Ginger:  
> Yet people repeatedly put inbred people down as though we are 
> automatically stupid and deserve to be treated badly because of our 
> blood, which IMO, is no different that treating someone badly 
because 
> of their race.  We can't choose our ancestors.  There's no reason a 
> person should be ashamed of one's background, race, religion, 
gender, 
> or other identifying features.  One should only have to be ashamed 
of 
> one's actions, if said actions are bad. 

zgirnius:
That's completely true, and I've never thought about it that way 
before! Now I'm sitting here thinking to myself that I have sixteen 
distinct great-great-grandparents, and suddenly feeling like the 
student in CoS who mentions his X generations of pure wizarding 
blood, whoever that was. Which makes me realize it is all a matter of 
degree, just like the purebloods in HP not being 'really' pure. A 
purely non-inbred person would be one whose number of ancestors in 
each previous generation doubles. Counting 30 years per generation, 
30 generations back (1000 years ago, roughly), a 'purely non-inbred' 
person would need to have 2^30, or well over a billion distinct 
ancestors. Which is impossible, since this exceeds the estimated 
worldwide population at the time by a factor of more than three.

Even if there is a statistically greater likelihood of certain 
genetic problems in people who are inbred to a greater degree than 
others, this is no reason for prejudice, any more than the (random-
<g>) fact that women are statistically less likely to excel at 
mathematics than men is a reason to believe all women should avoid 
the stuff.


> Ginger:
 I fully expected her to straighten 
> out the misconception about inbred folks in HBP or book 7.  I 
didn't 
> think she'd let this sort of prejudice stand, let alone feed into 
it.

zgirnius:
You know, I don't think she has given it any thought from the 
perspective you present. She is writing the decay of the Gaunt family 
as the logical, and 'karmic', consequence of the extreme pureblood 
supremacist position, it seems to me. To her it is not about putting 
down people from families like the Gaunts, but showing another evil 
consequence of pureblood supremacist thinking. 

> Ginger: 
> Her agenda in life is her own.  We can't all expect her to change 
for 
> each of us, no matter how right we think we are (and I do think I'm 
> right!), nor can we expect that her soapboxes will be our 
soapboxes.  

zgirnius:
Quite.
And good for you, for stepping on yours!