Muggles v wizards redux

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 183240

> > > 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.

Montavilla47:
This is where I start to wonder if JKR is playing some elaborate 
mind-game on us.  Because reading this benignly bigoted 
toward muggles (us) story produces in people who might
normally not personally feel the sting of prejudice that very 
same effect.

How much I loved the Dr. Doolittle books!  How I longed to 
be like the doctor and talk to animals!  How little I noticed the
antiquated "Africans are stupid savages, not even as smart as
animals" subtext.

Would an African child reading those stories identify with 
Tommy (It was Tommy, wasn't it?), or with Prince Bumpo,
the "good" African?  As a girl, I had no one to identify with
in the stories, except for the occasional animal, and the 
wife of the gardener, who sometimes got to make clothes.

In HP, we're invited to identify with the wizards.  But the 
fact remains that we aren't wizards, we are muggles, and 
by identifying with the magical people in the story, we are 
put into the position of siding against our own people--
as defined by the story itself.

Which is probably why some of us are feeling uneasy.  We're
put into the position of a Pole who hears a Polish joke and
has to decide whether to laugh along with the majority 
or take umbrage on behalf of his or her heritage.