Slytherins are bad (was:Re: Severus as friend)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183418

Betsy Hp:
> > > <snip>
> > > In the end, Slytherin is the "racist house."
> > > <snip>
>  
> > >>Zara:
> > Presumably, Slytherin was invited to found Hogwarts because he was
a good friend of the other founders, especially Godric...<snip>
> 
> Betsy Hp:
> That's what confuses me.  Why was Godric (and the rest *g*)
attracted to a racist?  I mean, Salazar wasn't subtle -- he out and
out stated that as far as he was concerned, certain students need not
apply.
> 
Carol responds:

Maybe we need an older analogy than American racism. After all, the
Wizards and Muggles in the HP books are almost all British and mostly
white. The concept of race as we know it (white, black, Asian) is
touched on but never discussed by the characters, who take such things
as interracial dating for granted.

Muggles are not members of a different race. In fact, all the Muggles
that we encounter are white, just like most of the Wizards (Angelina,
Dean, Lee, Kingsley, Cho, and the Patil twins being notable
exceptions) and all the main characters. What distinguishes Muggles
from Wizards (aside from the inability to perform magic, which is
really the *main* difference) is their "blood." It's almost a class
prejudice rather than a racial one. Pure-blood Wizards are "nature's
aristocracy," just as "blue-blooded" Muggles were England's (and the
rest of Europe's) aristocracy for hundreds of years. If you didn't
have royal blood, you couldn't rule. If you didn't have at least noble
blood, you couldn't marry a king (or queen). To this day, the UK has a
House of Lords and a House of Commons, the latter representing those
who, like most of us, don't have any noble blood.

Muggles are "commoners," their base blood excluding them from the
privilege of belonging to the WW. The extreme view that Muggles should
be dominated by wizards and made to serve them resembles aristocratic
treatment of serfs and peasants. (I'm not saying that all aristocrats
behaved in this disreputable manner; some of them believed in noblesse
oblige while others thought nothing of seizing lands they wanted from
rich commoners and even worse atrocities. But none of them would have
treated a farmer in the same way that they treated a duke or an earl,
and the chances of a farmer's son becoming a courtier were remote.)

To get back to Salazar Slytherin, he didn't want upstart Muggle-borns
(who might be treacherously allied to witch-burning Muggles, but
that's beside the point I'm making here) usurping the rights of
Pure-Blood Witches and Wizards, any more than medieval knights and
nobles would have wanted commoners usurping their places at court.

Godric Gryffindor was probably a Pure-blood, too, the friend and equal
of Salazar Slytherin. It was only when he wanted to limit a magical
education to those he considered worthy, those who were qualified by
"blood" as well as ability, that he and Godric began to disagree. And
it seems that, for awhile, Salazar was content to choose the students
he wanted for his own House and let the other three Founders do the
same, and the others were content to let him limit his selection to
Pure-bloods "of great ambition." They would not have labeled him a
racist; neither the term nor the concept existed. Apparently, it was
only when he went too far and apparently wanted to impose the
Pure-blood limitation on the whole school that the dueling and other
disturbances began.

As for a young Wizard liking another with extreme ideas regarding the
superiority of one group over another, just think of Dumbledore and
Grindelwald. For all we know, Salazar Slytherin was as charmingly
persuasive as GG--or the snake in Eden. I have no doubt at all that
Godric and Salazar really were the best of friends.

Carol, who thinks that the analogy between Pure-blood Wizards as a
natural aristocracy and medieval European aristocracy (also
"blood"-based) is obvious from the title "Nature's Nobility: A
Wizarding Genealogy"