The secrecy motif/magic & muggles

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 179992

> a_svirn:
. For one thing, they aren't completely 
> autonomous (as a social or cultural entity, I mean), for another, 
> while they might reproduce their culture, they do not dabble in 
> selective breeding in order to pass deafness on to the next 
> generation, as far as I am aware of.
>

Pippin:

It's happened....

http://jme.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/28/5/283

This was  obviously extreme, and highly controversial.

But the  Deaf do seek to actively transmit their culture across 
the generations by more conventional means, and do see themselves 
as apart from those who acquire deafness but are not part of their 
culture.

http://www.nad.org/site/pp.asp?c=foINKQMBF&b=180410

Obviously the Deaf aren't trying to keep their existence a
secret. But Google returned 28,300 hits for "deaf separatism"
JKR's wizards aren't unique in their desire to isolate themselves,
only in their success. 

But it has little to do with eugenics, since having a non-magic 
partner apparently does not increase your
chances of producing a squib or a weak wizard. I think Jo's
remarks about Dudley's DNA were only meant to apply to his
chances of producing a magical offspring with another Muggle,
since we've been told that magical parents nearly always have
magical children regardless of who their partner is. IOW, if
Dudley were to impregnate a witch, their offspring would most
likely be magical, just like any other Muggle wizard pairing. 

It may be, come to think of it, that Slytherin thought that Muggleborns
were the result of recent wizard/Muggle matings, and that if contact
between wizards and Muggles diminished, Muggleborns would be so
rare that they were no longer an issue. That would be a reason for
him to cooperate in the founding of the school, and  to agree to
teach Muggleborns magic despite his dislike for the idea. He might
have thought that Muggleborns were soon to disappear anyway.
But just in case they didn't, he left the basilisk, which could only
be released (as he thought) by a parselmouth. I'm sure he never
thought that his descendants would be anything but pure.

My own theory about Sally is that he wasn't originallly paranoid
about Muggleborns, but deteriorated as a result of old age or
some traumatic experience. He became impossible to deal with
in a group setting, continually trying to turn the group against
itself until in self-defense he was exiled. It wasn't his anti-Muggle
ideas but his newly paranoid personality that turned the others
against him. Just my theory, as I said. 

If I understand the non-science of wizard genetics,
there's no way for a wizard to choose a mate for their ability to 
produce magical  offspring, though many wizards would
like to discover one. However, there does seem to be a way
for a *Muggle* to do it, something that Jo doesn't seem to have
explored. Ah, fan fiction.

I'm as much as an amateur about genetics as Jo is, so my speculations
don't hold much water, but my theory is everyone must have magical
genes, they just don't work in most people. They're turned off, and
don't produce magical proteins. 

For magical reasons these genes are much more likely to turn themselves 
on during the reproductive process than to turn themselves off, and thus
muggleborns are so much more common than Squibs.

Pippin