JKR's lesson on prejudice (was:Slytherins come back)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180486

revaunchanistx:
> > What? Did you miss Harry and Draco's meeting in Madam Malkin's
where Draco oozed prejudice and privilege out of every pore, saying
half-bloods and mud bloods shouldn't be allowed in and my father is
trying to get me on the house team and insulted Hagrid, Harry's first
true friend.
> > <snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> Oh, that's the scene where I first fell in *love* with Draco. Tiny
little thing doing his best to make a new friend and saying *all* the
wrong things. Hilarious *and* poignant. 
> <SNIP>
> 
> Alla:
<snip>> 
> You agree that that tiny little thing in your opinion ( or tiny 
prejudiced pureblooded bastard in mine) was saying all the wrong 
things, yes?
> 
> I say he was saying all prejudicial things to the core (spotting 
prejudice and privilege - LOVE and will have to adopt this 
expression, hehe). So, where do you get that Harry was prejudiced 
towards Draco? I mean if you say he disliked Draco after his speeches
Harry's parents, Harry's first true friend and Harry's second true
friend, I will surely agree with you.
<snip>
> 
> I think Draco earned every bit of dislike from Harry by insulting 
everybody whom Harry liked under the moon in undeserving, prejudicial way.

Carol responds;

As long as we're presenting purely personal reactions here, I might as
well throw in mine since they fall somewhere in the middle. I neither
loved nor hated Draco in the first interview, and I did have some
degree of sympathy for his tendency to put his foot in his mouth,
cluelessly spouting his parents' philosophy and opinion (which I'm
sure he had never heard contradicted), and, of course, he had no idea
that Hagrid was a friend of Harry's.

He did not, however, refer to Half-Bloods at all, nor did he use the
term "Mudblood," which does not appear until CoS. He merely refers to
"the other kind," meaning Muggle-borns, as not deserving of inclusion
in Hogwarts. (Harry says that his parents were "a witch and a wizard,"
which Draco would interpret as meaning that he was at least a
Half-Blood and possibly a pure-blood. I don't suppose it occurs to him
that both parents might be "Mudbloods," which would mean that their
child still didn't have a drop of wizard blood in him by the reckoning
of pure-blood supremacists.)

At any rate, Draco struck me as slightly spoiled (saying that he'd
"bully Father into buying him a broom"; we haven't yet met Lucius, who
would buy Draco and the whole team excellent brooms to give them the
edge over Gryffindor but is not likely to be bullied by the son he
criticizes for getting lower marks than "a girl of no wizarding
heritage" and refuses to buy the Hand of Glory for). I agree that he
seemed like a rich little snob, regarding Hagrid, whom he doesn't know
("I say! Who is that man?") as "a sort of servant," no doubt based on
his parents' attitude toward the gamekeeper. But he's completely
neutral toward Harry, only wanting to know his surname ("blood"
again), whether he plays Quidditch, and what House he expects to be
placed in (his attitude toward Hufflepuff--he'd rather be sent home
than be placed there--foreshadowing James's words about Slytherin
though, of course, we don't know that--is not that different from
Hagrid's view that Hufflepuffs are "duffers").

Harry, too, starts out with a neutral attitude, but his dislike grows
as the oblivious young stranger reveals the ideas that he's been
indoctrinated with, reminds him of Dudley (which can hardly create
warm feelings in Harry), and dismisses Harry's new friend as inferior
because he works for his living (aristocratic, not "blood,"
prejudice). I didn't mind Draco; he just seemed to be a relic of the
nineteenth century somehow transported to the twentieth. But I did
wonder what would have happened if Draco had not interrupted his own
question, "What's your surname?" and Harry had been allowed to answer
the question. (I suppose we'd just have had the scene on the train
prematurely, minus Ron and Draco's bodyguards.)

Anyway, I came away from their first encounter thinking that Draco was
all about class and privilege whereas Harry represented what used to
be called "the common man," and it was obvious where JKR expected the
reader's sympathy to lie. Even after the incident on the Hogwarts,
when Draco tries to become Harry's friend because he now knows who he
is ("the famous Harry Potter") and insults Ron (again, no doubt,
mouthing what he's heard at home about the Weasleys), I felt a bit
sorry for him. Draco hasn't learned to think for himself (hardly
surprising at eleven), he's evidently had no exposure to progressive
ideas, and he's never been taught graciousness or tact. He thinks,
just as Slughorn does in HBP, that it's all about connections. (He,
Draco, can teach Harry to avoid "the wrong sort.") I think he's
completely at a loss as to why Harry refuses to shake his hand, not
realizing that Harry is judging Ron as an individual, not on the basis
of his family's (relative) poverty or their views on Muggles and
Muggleborns. Harry at this point has no preconceptions, unlike Draco
(and Hagrid), on which to base a prejudice. He does, however, come to
develop such preconceptions with regard to Slytherin, thanks to both
Hagrid and Draco, and by the time of the Sorting ceremony, he sees
Slytherin as the House of Voldemort and his supporters, with which he
wants nothing to do. Had he not met Draco, he might have been Sorted
into Slytherin. And that might have made an even more interesting series.

All quotes in this post are from memory as I don't have time to look
them up.

Carol, hoping that this post contains no embarrassing blunders like
Voldemort's potentially deadly "Expelliarmi" (hey, I was thinking
about the plural form and not about the context, 0-p!!)