Muggles v wizards redux

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 183237

> a_svirn:
> Actually it doesn't, which is the trouble. It is highly unlikely 
that 
> the characters, even the much abused Harry knew only "bad" muggles. 
> Nor Harry is the only character to have any contact with muggles. 
And 
> yet all the muggles we do see in the books somehow seem to be less 
> than satisfactory human being. Even the two specimens from that 
short 
> 800-word story. We are shown repeatedly, even persistently, that 
> muggles are either mean, or stupid and always just plain inferior.  
> Such persistence is conspicuous. It requires an explanation. And 
any 
> explanation I can come up with makes me uneasy. 

Magpie:
Exactly. Muggles are all over the place in the books and always 
inferior. They just can't handle any of the stuff magical people do, 
even the Prime Minister. The attitude toward Muggles isn't at all 
that they just don't matter in the story. It's always fun showing how 
superior Wizards are. Not superior in terms of character, but they 
are the in-group with all the power and Muggles just can't be treated 
as people on the same level. Even their Wizard children must become 
parents in the family. It permeates everything, even seemingly 
innocuous interactions and language.


> > Carol:
> or because they're unknown and misunderstood. (Compare
> > nineteenth-century cartoons of African natives, for example.)
> 
> a_svirn:
> Well, such cartoons were not exactly innocuous. They represented 
the 
> views that led to certain polices of discrimination and 
persecution.  
> a_svirn

Magpie:
This is what makes it so bizarre, imo, when the author then says the 
books are a plea for tolerance. They're full of exactly that kind of 
mindset--we even pretty much have the nineteenth-century African 
cartoons when we visit the giants. Judging people by the group they 
were born into is very valid in this universe. Even those from other 
groups who are counted as friends by the heroes do so because they 
agree with the inferiority of their race and adopt the values of 
Wizards.

If I were to not identify with the Dursleys as Muggles because we're 
not like them personality-wise I'd feel like I was just indulging in 
wishful thinking. Wizards obviously wouldn't make that distinction. 
Sure they might think I was one of the "good ones" but their contempt 
for what I was would be the same. The best treatment Muggles get is 
Wizards patting themselves on the back for being so tolerant as to 
believe we shouldn't be actively tormented and killed. (And that's 
very recognizable in bigoted attitudes in the real world too, imo.) 
The subtext of Wizard's "all people are of equal worth" is always 
very clearly "even the inferior people!" 

-m