Dark Umbridge / Was Salazar a Bigot?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 180028

Steve bboyminn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179935>:

<< [Umbridge] doesn't seem to be a practitioner of the DARK ARTS, >>

Surely that blood-sucking pen was a Dark Artifact. And she intended to
use the Cruciatis Curse on Harry -- aren't the Unforgiveable Curses
Dark Magic?

Steve bboyminn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179974>:

<< if Slytherin were the absolute fanatical racist modern tales make
him out to be, why would he be invited by the other obviously
benevolent founders to join in. >>

Because they figure he's more dangerous on the outside, where no one
knows what he's up to, than he is in on the inside, where they can
keep an eye on him and also play on his natural vanity to make him
want the school to be a success because it's his project as well as
theirs and has his name on it as well as theirs. 

I figured that out (for fanfic) before the Sorting Hat sang the verse
in which Salazar and Godric were the best of friends -- if the Hat was
telling the truth (Rowling's answer to that question was 'the Sorting
Hat is certainly sincere'), Salazar must have had some good traits for
the noble Godric to like him.

I'm not sure which I would prefer, a back story in which Salazar
really was pretty evil, altho' not necessary a blood-ist, or a back
story in which the conflict among the Founders was all a big
misunderstanding.

Goddlefrood wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/179983>:

<< during Slytherin's life time the wizarding world and the muggle
world mixed. How freely we don't know, but we do know that the Statute
of Secrecy only came in around 700 years after the founding of
Hogwarts, so from that I would have to conclude that he wasn't worried
about the exposure of the WW, as some more recent pure-blood
supremacists might have been. >>

We have CANON that the Founders "built this castle together, far from
prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common
people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution." So even
tho' Muggles already knew that wizards existed and therefore Salazar
wasn't afraid that Muggles would find out that wizards exist, all four
Founders were afraid that Muggles would find their school and
persecute its inhabitants.

<< what other reason than bigotry would there be for Slytherin's
mistrust of muggle-borns? Those muggle-borns we have met would not
lead to a conclusion, IMO, that they can not be trusted. >>

Salazar's reason for thinking Muggle-born students 'untrustworthy'
need not be that he thought them worse blabbermouths than purebloods
are. I always figured that his argument was that Muggle-born students,
because their parents and many of their other relatives and neighbors
are Muggles, have much more contact with Muggles than pureblood
students do, and therefore have much more opportuntity to slip and
reveal the location of Hogwarts to a Muggle. 
 
Especially if the Muggle was deliberately trying to find the location
and therefore played on the Muggle-born student's family affection, or
patriotic loyalty to some local king or chief, or religious beliefs.