Muggles, Mudbloods and Squibs

[sistermagpie]

I can't believe I'm actually sticking a toe in the "Racists or not!" debate, but with all the talk about it I can't stop my head from thinking about it. I don't have a real point or a theory, so I'm just going to try to figure out

First, in terms of the Muggleborn prejudice=racism, I admit I find it really complicated. Sure there are ways that it's like racism, especially in the way Draco Malfoy seems to understand it as a way to insult Hermione Granger. However, if it were an allegory it would be saying that being white is like having magical powers and living in a secret world that is completely arranged around keeping non-white people from knowing of its existence. White people go out and prank non-white people, but non-white people still don't know that because they think white people are fictional or the white people fiddle with them so they lose their memories. Every year, though, a number of non-white couples have white children--or perhaps, children with skills that white people want? So they're let in on the secret, but their parents have to keep the secret and I guess can’t ever really talk about their kids again. God knows their access to them becomes limited.

Someone actually could probably do a story where they used something like this as an allegory, but given that HP spends no time on what it's like for a Muggleborn (they all just adapt, assimilate and stop being non-white and that's fine with everyone?), it just doesn't seem like that's JKR's point.

Because of that I admit I don't much *feel* the racism/bigotry story in the Mudblood idea. I get it, obviously. Intellectually I know it's a slur and I understand that the people who use the word are dehumanizing the people they use it on. Many perpetrators of genocide have used just this sort of idea in judging races. However, it doesn't have quite the same kick to me as a real slur, since Muggleborns just don't seem to be in the same position. When Hermione first hears the word she says she can tell it's rude, but doesn't know what it means--of course, because grew up a Muggle. She grew up as part of the dominant culture and is now again part of the dominant culture as far as we see, since we don't see Muggleborns treated as an underclass. Not being welcome at Grimmauld Place or being the preferred victim of one particular monster does not make you an underclass, as bad as those things are.

Thinking about this lately I realize that I almost feel like the blood prejudice is a slightly different element that's placed into the story to be the rhetoric of Voldemort. The kids in CoS (the non-Muggle-raised that is) respond to Draco's using the slur with anger. Clearly in that scene it’s supposed to remind us of slurs from our world. It’s always the Purebloods who respond most vehemently to the word, which makes sense because they're the ones for whom it means the most. It's the word that marks you as a Voldemort-ish person, obviously. But when Draco or Teen!Snape or Voldemort isn't using the term, it kind of fades away because the blood prejudice idea is so vaguely described. For instance, we know the basilisk goes after Muggleborns. Stuffy Ernie Macmillan brags he's Pureblood back 9 generations, yet is very friendly with would-have-gone-to-Eton Justin, making the Pureblood idea seem sort of class-connected there. We know which families are the old Pureblood clans.

Often in fandom Purebloodedness gets connected with other things, especially class, I think because while we know intellectually that "less Pure" means connections to Muggles, we don't see Muggles and Wizards interact enough for that to mean anything, if that makes sense. (And where Wizards and Muggles do interact it’s often inconsistent and confusing.) Fandom often tries to make rules to follow, for instance by saying Snape couldn't really have been a DE or couldn't really like it or Slytherin because he's a half-blood, but even setting aside the fact that human beings are not always that logical, we don't see scenes of prejudice against half-bloods anyway since our hero is one and it’s never an issue.

This is not to say that the books don't ever seem to show real bigotry to me. They do. Only rarely by using the word "Mudblood." There's one time in the series where prejudice against Muggleborn Hermione feels very real to me. It's when she's having the trouble with Rita Skeeter and she gets a letter that says something to the effect of, "Go back where you came from, Muggle.

Muggle is a slur I feel. Muggles are inferior. Everyone treats them that way. It’s woven into every level of the society. Hell, reading the book as a Muggle myself *I* am known to feel angry and discriminated against. Muggle is, of course, supposed to be a neutral word and not an insult, but it's used as an insult all the time. So is another word that seems an even better example of discrimination: Squib. And there’s Hagrid the half-giant calling Filch a "sneakin’ Squib." (Ahem. And referring to centaurs as Mules.) You don’t need a “bad word” for Muggles and Squibs, because the real thing is so shameful.

My point isn't that OMG the good guys are just the same as DEs! I would rather be condescended to than wiped out, yes. But what I'm saying is that left to their own devices the characters demonstrate realistic bigotry really well, in a way that seems more natural and organic than the official stance against Muggleborns. These are slurs I *feel* instead of just understand. When Hagrid refers to Filch as a "sneakin' Squib" because Filch has dismissed his authority as a teacher (I personally suspect due to the fact that Hagrid has moved up from an employee like Filch to a Professor), he's not just calling him a mean name. He’s reminding Filch that he is part of the underclass of Wizarding Society, because Filch is on the receiving end of the most consistent, hostile prejudice they have: He can't do magic. Incompetent wizards are called "Squib." Mrs. Figg is dealt with suspiciously at Harry's hearing--she seems to not officially exist the way she would if she were a Witch. Filch is the one adult Harry hexes in the hallway (public school boy humiliates janitor denied entry to public school due to circumstances of birth while other students laugh--great). If I were running Hogwarts, not only would Draco Malfoy get detention for using the word Mudblood but there would be hell to pay if any student hexed Argus Filch.

There is one other time in canon Hermione is called a Muggle, at the QWC, and it points up the ambivalent attitude. Malfoy says the DEs are going after "Muggles" and Harry says Hermione's a witch. On one hand, this is true. Malfoy is calling her a Muggle to suggest she is not "one of them," and Harry is rejecting that, which is good. Malfoy is defining "witch" by being related to magical folk, Harry is correcting him that "witch" is defined by having magical talent. Only it's one of those awkward situations where it's hard to correct the person without agreeing with him. For instance, if someone makes an anti-Semitic remark to me, I might instinctually think of correcting the person by saying I'm not Jewish. But at the same time I wouldn't want to do that because it seems like the wrong way to "defend" myself, like I'm saying, "Oh, I'm not one of THEM, so I'm okay."

My intention isn't to judge Harry here on the exact way he defends his friend in the heat of the moment, especially since in that context Draco isn't technically using Muggle as a slur. But I do think his reaction here is the consistent one with Wizards because we never get the other side of the defense. Hermione never steps up with, "Yes, Malfoy, I am a Muggle. My whole family is Muggles and we're a lot better than you are." No, Hermione seems to share the Wizarding view of Muggles as inferior. In OotP when Ginny is disparaging Arthur's agreeing to try stitches to cure his wounds Hermione does not respond to her, "Stitches...I ask you!" by saying that hey, Muggle medicine is actually pretty damn good and what on earth is silly about the idea of stitches? Instead she says "fairly" (according to the narrator) that they do work on non-magical wounds. (Amazingly I've actually heard *readers* talk about how stupid the idea of stitches are...wtf? What would they do if they cut themselves at home? Smear on Eye of Newt?)

In fact, I can’t remember Hermione ever having much to say on the subject at all. When I was reading over the CoS chapter I realized that Hermione literally *disappears* in the scene. As soon as Malfoy calls her a Mudblood it becomes about Ron and Draco. Hermione squeals once and she and Harry bring Ron to Hagrid’s, but Hermione is silent and clueless until Ron explains what happened. When Kreacher calls her a Mudblood the Twins and Ginny get angry at him. I don’t have a solution for what this “means” if anything. Mostly it always seems to me that, just as it was that first day, the word to Hermione is just any other insult, this one far less hurtful than something like Snape’s remark about her teeth, because Hermione feels self-conscious about those and while she may feel very self-conscious about being a *newcomer* to the WW, I don’t know that she thinks of it in terms of blood. She may, of course, in which case we just got into an even more disturbing area, where Hermione has internalized the Wizard contempt for Muggles completely and is actively trying to eradicate all her ties to her family and that world. Especially since the Weasleys are so quick to respond to the word; it has meaning for them which, I cautiously admit makes me wonder if they just identify Hermione as a Muggleborn in their minds all the time the way Harry doesn't.

So for me, the books accurately portray bigotry any number of ways, but the most obvious is Muggle/Wizard. Squibs, being non-Magical, are treated with equal disdain. Which does not mean they're always insulted, as I'm sure many will point out. The attitude towards Muggles seems to usually run along the lines of many bigots in the real world, where using a racial slur isn't racist if the person has "earned it" by living down to the stereotype. Iow, as long as you don't annoy the person, your race isn't an issue. This is the defense the Weasley twins and many fans have for Dudley's being given a tail, Dudley's tongue being swollen up, Dumbledore's violent mead glasses, Harry's hexing and Hagrid's insulting of Filch. But this is why, as a Muggle, I recognize it more as something I see as racism. I know I'd never be an equal to these people. If I stepped out of line the wands would come out so that I'd know my place. The blood issue is, of course, an outgrowth of this same prejudice. There is, imo, just far more vivid depictions of the larger issue than the subset.

It just seems to me to be unavoidable when you’ve got a story that has at its center a question of bigotry, with a maniacal leader and followers who you maybe want to be associated with Nazis and the Klan or things like that, yet also the appeal of protagonists defined by their being superior to other people.

Comments

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I think that your analogy of antisemitism works very well. Antisemitism is something between racism (since it was invented to be a term of racism, as opposed to religious discrimination) and other forms of bigotry. Also, because the term "limpieza de sangre" was invented during the Spanish Inquisition so that conversion would not be a way out of trouble.

There is a great deal of prejudice in the Wizarding world, and a lot of it, both the malignant form practiced by the Death Eaters and the benign form practiced by the Weasleys, resembles racism. It's a lot more complex than that, but the resemblence must be acknowledged.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's no need to make it one thing or the other because given the situation in the WW it doesn't completely match up with our world, period. In OotP especially I remember feeling like the Pureblood story was suddenly sounding more Jewish--though not to the point where I thought it was a direct analogy.

I didn't know that about "limpieza de sangre" but it makes sense. I can remember being a kid and not understanding that concept existed and seeing being Jewish as much like being, say, Hugenot (even knowing about Jesus making a difference--it just never made that much difference to *me*).

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post.

I always thought that Hermione plays down her background because she continually has to justify her friendship with Harry and at times Ron. Draco and his gang, Rita, and the other students, always strike at Hermione first.

There is more to this subject then what we are seeing. Harry isn't treated the same way. He just assumes that his is a normal experience.

Muggles seem to be grouped on the outer edges of wizarding society...like serfs.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it just seems like it's very hard to avoid the giant elephant that is the Muggleworld, completely separated from the Wizarding world. The students' parents get treated differently if nothing else--Muggle parents can't see the place and don't know what's going on.

[ptyx.livejournal.com]

It's a complicate issue. I feel that JKR is clearly using the blood prejudice as a Nazi metaphor (and, therefore, a metaphor of racism). However, at the same time, the Muggles (and the other magical beings) really seem to be inferior to the Wizards in the series...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's just very hard to untangle the various threads. I think what sometimes frustrates me is when people really do want to look at it as just a question of Muggleborns without linking it to the larger anti-Muggle feeling. Sometimes it comes down to literally just saying: don't be racist against people of your own race.

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

being the preferred victim of one particular monster

Which leads to the interesting notion of virgins as an oppressed class.

The thing with the whole is-it-or-isn't-it-racism debate, I feel, has become this huge muddle of wildly conflated things:

1.) Does Rowling intend for blood prejudice to be analogous for racism in her books? Clearly yes, she said so herself.

2.) Does she does a good enough job with that analogy to make it believable? Yes and no. She gives us almost no analysis whatsoever of why overtly prejudiced characters might be prejudiced, other than that they learned it from their parents; or why and in what ways the covertly prejudiced characters tolerate/encourage the overtly prejudiced ones; of how power struggles within the pureblood community contribute to, inflame, or defuse the prejudice at various times; of what specific instances of systemic power-over, besides overt madmen killing and maiming, raise the issue from one of prejudice to one of an actual -ism (as she more clearly makes the case for wrt say, werewolves); of what the culture of assimilation is like outside of Hermione, and whether and to what extent there is 'passing', and where the fuck are the Mudblood Pride! clenched-fist organizations that have been down so long that they're about ready to consider joining battle with larger Wizarding society themselves? I know that looks like a hell of a laundry list, and someone's going to accuse me of wanting Rowling to be preachy by addressing all that. But it's not a question of preaching, it's a question of effective world-building. You can't portray an -ism that is supposedly so pervasive that it has led to violence, massacre, and civil war within a tiny society like that twice in as many generations, and not have some kind of answer to those issues appearing however briefly in the margins, and yet the closest we get to anything meaningful in that regard is that Draco's distaste for the Weasleys conflates ideas of blood treachery and race. Other than that, it's all a blank vast wilderness. And of course people project the answers they already 'know' based on our universe into that space, but that's not an adequate substitute for real worldbuilding in the circumstances. On the other hand, as you point out, she quite clearly does do something approaching that for people who actually lack magical talent - Muggles and Squibs - yet she doesn't seem to be able to do anything with that and she may well have put it in accidentally.

3.) Are the Death Eaters properly considered analogous to the KKK or Nazis specifically? No; they're clearly too much of a hash of both, and several other things, to be a good analogy for either. Which is a major symptom of Rowling's failure at 2., since those groups, aside from the obvious, had pretty different epidemiologies and could only have arisen in very different societies. Trying to split the difference leads to a confused picture of wizarding society on the whole.

4.) Are real, live, fandom people who express interest in or sympathy for specific Death Eaters or Death Eaters in general, or are able to express a feeling of 'There but for fortune...', Nazi/KKK sympathizers? This is a more meaningful question than 'are they racist?' because of course all white people are implicated in racism (Slytherfen of color get a special t-shirt, I guess.) And no, I think the answer is very obviously no. But then the wank starts.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Which leads to the interesting notion of virgins as an oppressed class.

LOL! Yes, I was going to compare it to Son of Sam going after women with blonde hair. Blondism? I'm not sure...

All this I just have to agree with. It in many ways shows the danger of bringing up these kinds of issues in a fantasy setting *without* doing all this extra world-building. The trouble seems to come from the mishmash of things, with people just grabbing whatever things they want and running with them.

For instance, when people get off on the tangent of whether or not Wizards have anything to fear from Muggles. The thing is, I can see both sides because it's just not very consistent or realistic. On the one hand Wizards are granted so much power and Muggles are ridiculous. Yet otoh, all of Wizard society is based around literally hiding from Muggles. So I just literally don't see how one can assume that a person who comes up with a logical reason for prejudice against Muggles/Muggleborns must be also trying to excuse racism. I'm more confused by one of the other things you mentioned--where is the Mudblood pride? Why aren't the Muggleborns friends with each other? There is no way this would not happen if this world were real. There *would* be clashes, particularly given the way Muggles are universally seen as idiots. This is just the sort of thing that would lead to problems. Only it's like the author wants to control it or make sure the racism is as arbitrary as possible because to do something else would be to say racism was okay.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rp_zeal_/]

Great post as per usual :-)

I won't go into my species/aliens/X-men analogy again, but it's still the only way I can interpret the wizard/muggle relationship. The day I can treat folks whose genes enable them to disappear/appear in thin air and bloody turn me into anything as another ethnic group merely with higher IQ is the day I abandon logic altogether.

I do think one can draw more similarities between pureblood/muggle-born relationship and that between ethnic groups, although like you said sometimes it feels even more like two social classes interacting. So yeah, I get that discriminating against muggle-borns= bigotry= bad, but it's really no worse than discriminating against squibs and other magical-folks in non-humanoid forms (the discriminating, NOT the wiping-out, geez I hate this obligatory I AM NOT SUPPORTING VOLDEMORT disclaimer), and is similar to racism in quite limited ways. So.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, and my mind just keeps going down the wrong road because the discrimination against Muggleborns *could* certainly work as a different ethnic group but it's not like there's any effort made on making them one except in that they're insulted by some Purebloods.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

I think part of the mix-up both in the author's mind and in ours has to do with having a hero who's so unusual in his society - Harry is Muggle-raised, not Muggleborn, and while his parents were magical (he's not a halfblood in the same sense as Snape, who had a nonmagical father) he knew nothing about them and their society until he was of age. So he's a newcomer like the Muggleborns, but with blood ties good enough to satisfy all but the most fanatical Purebloods, and his perspective is not the same as that of any other category of wizard or Muggle. (Not that JKR couldn't have thought this out more thoroughly even having to use Harry as the lens we see it through.)

Also, if either DEs or wizards in general are "racist" it is from the unusual perspective of a minority class, since Muggles are dominant in the population. Yes, that happened in South Africa and other places, but in those cases the white racists were immigrants - wizards have been part of their respective societies as far back as anyone can imagine, and have repeatedly interbred with the Muggles around them, generally with the effect of producing magical children (along with some Squibs). None of the standard analogies seem to work well for that situation.

Anyway, great post (as always), and I particularly like your point that "Muggle" is the worst insult in the books, especially since generally accepted. And Hermione does need further consideration - how deep is her assimilation, and what are the effects? But I doubt we're going to see any of that.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This definitely describes all the ways I get confused in trying to draw any direct parallels. It's why I just can't jump to the conclusion that any one idea about DEs necessarily means someone feels a certain way about racism. Even if someone is romanticizing Purebloods, that's not the only way to romanticize this sort of thing in the series. Like in my experience I find it strange that someone can think it's awful to say Haha, those Muggleborns are inferior but be fine with Ha ha, those Muggles are inferior without ever thinking about why those things are different..

[ex-leianora730.livejournal.com]

I agree, Hermione does need deeper consideration. For example, how much of what goes on at Hogwarts do her parents actually know? I guarantee you, if half the crap going on there happened to my kid, I'd be pulling her out of there so fast it'd make apparation look like a slow motion close-up frame!

I once read a bit of meta wherein the writer pointed out how odd it was to never hear of Muggle-born students craving sodas, wondering if their favorite tv shows were being recorded for them, or disliking some of the Wizarding foods such as butterbeer. It only accents the disturbing assimilationist attitude, does it not?

Oh, and speaking of prejudice, I gathered that the DE views of pure bloods being better is a bad thing, so people like the Weasleys are good people, but Sirius told Harry in book five that there were many more people who agreed with Voldemort's views until they saw just how far he was willing to go to make his utopia a reality. So, what are Mrs. Weasley's first words when Harry encounters the family for the first time? "Packed with muggles," she says. Her tone is one of exasperation, and I'm not really sure if it's directed at the general frustration of getting five kids hustled off to school before the train leaves, or the Muggles themselves.

One more thing, just because it's always bothered me. Mrs. Weasley asks the question, "which platform is the train on?" Clearly, she and her children know the answer, so why does she ask such an inane question?

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

One more thing, just because it's always bothered me. Mrs. Weasley asks the question, "which platform is the train on?" Clearly, she and her children know the answer, so why does she ask such an inane question?

I've only got 2 kids to chase in circles, but I swear some days I'm so frazzled I forget my own name. Maybe it was one of those days?

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I've sort of stayed out of this because I think the Pureblood = racist debate has managed to be both very muddled and highly charged, which is not a productive or happy mixture. But like you in the end I just can't resist trying to find common ground a little bit.

The problem I have with both sides is that they're arguing about whether Purebloodism is racism as if racism is some sort of Platonic category that things fit into or don't. And "racism" may indeed be such a category for certain things that happen in the real world, though even here it's more likely to be inextricably mixed with other social and personal issues. But I don't think the word is usefully applied that way in the WW. Apart from being an imaginary part of a fantasy world (let us remember), Purebloodism is something sui generis, not necessarily directly comparable to anything else, and words like "racism" are at best just mental stepping stones to getting a better imaginative grasp of what it is on its own terms.

So, for instance: it's like racism because it seems to have at least a partial genetic component and because it is used to stigmatize a big and persistent class of people rather than treat them as individuals. But it's not like racism because the power/exploitation angle is less clear, because there's an important and significant difference between people at the core of it, and because the "privileged" class is largely content to hide and stay away from the "unprivileged" group, etc., etc. Your white/black analogy makes clear the absurdity of taking the analogy to extremes. So the word "racism" is a tool for thinking through what Purebloodism is, and refining distinctions, not for putting an end to thinking about it.

What else is it like? Is it bigotry? Is it classism? Again, to some extent, to some extent not. Is it partly ugly and partly justified? No end of debate, there: is it more like whites and blacks in apartheid South Africa, or more like Israelis and Palestinians? (Deliberately using two examples people will react to very differently.) Or more like Indians and Fijians in Fiji? Again the best you can do is make a comparison, see if bits are illuminating and discard the bits that aren't. Say it again: Purebloodism is its own thing, a made-up thing, with no obviously identical parallel in the real world. Amen.

If you get beyond labelling it to the point of deciding how you feel about it morally, I think those judgments can be much more precise. You can condemn Purebloodism in action when you see someone like Draco reduce Hermione to a type, rather than evaluating her as an individual. Which is probably the common denominator in why racism, classism, and lots of other separate and distinct bad things are personal vices. Sociologically, is it an evil the way ethnic or cultural conflict is an evil? Possibly, if it is invoked to deny opportunities to deserving individuals, and possibly if it used as a "red meat" political issue by certain WW powers. But again, it would be a bad thing because of these subordinate reasons, and not because of what you happen to call it.

So I really like your emphasis on the concrete impacts that Purebloodism has on people who believe in it or who deal with people who believe in it. I think this is more fruitful that worrying about whether it can be "finally" subsumed under a label like racism. There's no end to the invidious distinctions people make among other people, and it's probably more important to figure out the difference between incompletely resisting a cultural prejudice, and indulging it to the point of being obnoxious, and indulging it to the point of murdering other people.

For the counter-argument, probably the main temptation to impose a one-to-one label like racism comes from the idea that JKR is doing a very specific allegory here. But I think JKR tends to resist being pinned down that way (whether by art or by pure accident, I don't know!) so I'm not sure that would be convincing. I really think it's just a false trail and it's more sensible to assume that chasing down a label, or making a one-to-one correspondence with a real-world phenomenon isn't going to get us anywhere.

.02, and for you, a special discount!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yay! You just pinned down the debate (or rather, refused to pin it down) better than I could. And to turn it back on to a possible flaw in canon, I think the things teratolgist brings up are important because we *should* be having these conversations about the WW. We're stuck bringing maybe a little too much in from our own world because we can't really argue the point based on Rowling's information. And many people, I think, bring stuff in from their own pov and literally don't understand that other people are not bringing in the same things. So they might not realize that someone isn't defending the specific RW idea they have brought to the text there.

Think, for instance, of the House Elf question. We're talking about slavery here, and yet people don't seem to get into the same knock-down fights about it. I think it's because even though we don't have all the facts about House Elves we have enough to know that this is something *different* than what we have in our world, even if in some ways it is the same. So people can often talk about House Elves more like an intellectual problem in the story, whether they fully support Hermione or think she's being condescending. All those views are given in the text as well. The Pureblood question is harder because the good guys all have the same view on it, even while not really acting in a way that lives up to what they say.

[agarttha.livejournal.com]

I have always thought that beacuse of the limitation of language, racism is an easy banner to rally the anti-bigotry brigade, who quite often rally against the Pureblood Pride party. But I don't think enough is made of the fact that wizards are fundamentally different from Muggles, and in this fundamental fact the N-word/M-word analogy fails.

Our civilisation has intellectually arrived at the consensus of disagreeing with the precepts of Racism, seeing them as fundamentally cosmetic: this cannot be said of the Muggle/Wizard relationship. They are not the same, they never will be.

And wizards don't know how to deal with this, this almost imperial/colonial Guilt, of beings who look like them and are yet fundamentally different, who cannot conjure, cannot heal, cannot do anything except live like animals.

I don't think enough is made of the Statue of Secrecy; it is in fact a barrier , a tremendously racist one, if one can still uss the term in this context, and it is the benign Weasleys of the world, one thinks, who have enacted this fundamentally flawed law. Not the Malfoys, who would bring the fundamental differnece and dislike into the open, and show the distaste for freaks like Hermione who represent their greatest fear-- how close they are to the unspeakable Muggles.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes yes. The Statute of Secrecy seems like the elephant in the room to me. How can anyone suggest the WW isn't racist (or whatever-ist) down to its core when the whole thing is based on *hiding* from this other group of people. For instance, I've been surprised by conversations where one person will suggest that Wizards are afraid of Muggles for any number of reasons (outnumbered, destructive weapons, etc.) and another person will point out that canon contradicts this--we never see them afraid. And that's true...but what of the secrecy? Why are they hiding if Muggles are so silly? And why does their society seem to often borrow so much from them? They don't even have more than one village in G.B.!

So yeah, I think there's a lot of mixed feelings that wizards would have for these lower forms of wizards. And especially when you add Squibs into the mix it it's hard to ignore the extreme prejudice.

[aerden.livejournal.com]

I haven't read your post yet--I'm still at work--but for me the big issue about muggles, mudbloods, and squibs is genetics. I can't figure out how the genetics work. Which is dominant and which is recessive, magic or non-magic? I used to think I had figured out the answer, but the genetics makes no sense to me.

Chantal

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes--I've seen many a conversation trying to explain it, and the author is no help at all!

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Great post, though whenever I see stuff like this I keep thinking that this aspect of the books, like many others, gets so much more analysis than it merits. I think you've in this post analyzed the "racism" issue more than JKR has, and the contradictions and complexities are simply the result of sloppy thinking on her part.

Iow, as long as you don't annoy the person, your race isn't an issue. This is the defense the Weasley twins and many fans have for Dudley's being given a tail, Dudley's tongue being swollen up, Dumbledore's violent mead glasses, Harry's hexing and Hagrid's insulting of Filch. But this is why, as a Muggle, I recognize it more as something I see as racism. I know I'd never be an equal to these people. If I stepped out of line the wands would come out so that I'd know my place.

God, yes. I really hate that defense. I've heard people say "if Dudley were a wizard they would have hexed him anyway," and my response is "if Dudley were a wizard he could have fought back, which might have made them less likely to attack him and would in any case have made the fight more equal." That defense is kind of like a white person back in the Jim Crow days saying "oh, I didn't hit/maul/lynch this black guy because he's black. I did it because he was looking at my girl." Well, maybe, but you wouldn't have been able to get away with it if he weren't black, and he would have been better equipped to fight back if he were white since he wouldn't face the extreme social prohibition against hitting a white man. Fred and George and Hagrid were all benefiting from the unequal status of Muggles when they attacked Dudley.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL--it's true I have probably thought it out more here! But then, I think what I'm looking at here is more something that's natural or at least comes natural out of something else the author is doing, rather than something she consciously put there. Like when people say that the Dursley baiting scenes are supposed to be funny, it's true--but that still makes it interesting to look at in light of the other themes in teh book.

ITA with all those comparisons with the Muggle thing. In fact, the only time in canon I can think of a wizard who's tormented in a similar way it's Snape in the Pensieve, where at least he is still trying to fight back. A lot of it is just, to me, about not abusing power (something Snape is supposed to be bad for doing).

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Not going to discuss the muggle/wizard stuff here - what you have said is very sensible, and the anti-squib prejudice is especially ugly.

Every year, though, a number of non-white couples have white children--or perhaps, children with skills that white people want? So they're let in on the secret, but their parents have to keep the secret and I guess can’t ever really talk about their kids again. God knows their access to them becomes limited.

I found this really interesting - in Australia, even into the early 1970s, there was a policy of forcibly "assimilating" Aboriginal children who had any white ancestry at all, or who had paler skin and looked like they might. The childen, now known as the "Stolen Generations" were removed from their birth family and given to white families to be raised white (or at least whiter). Aboriginal parents tried to darken their children's skin, or hide them, to stop them being taken away. It was thought that the Aboriginal people would eventually just die out.

Many of the children, though considered partially white, were not raised in families, but were sent to missions to become farmhands or domestic servants (this also happened to imported British orphans). They were not allowed to stay with their families, but were not quite part of the dominant society, either. It draws an interesting parallel to the muggleborn students and the expectations of them by the "pureblood" group. They're not real wizards, but they're not the same as Muggles.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I have heard of that history. It's kind of interesting to think about here since wizards aren't stealing children, certainly, but they do pluck out Muggle children who are "theirs" and raise them as their own. From what we've seen they pretty much do "take" them, at least that's what happens. They don't do the same to their own children. Squibs live in the WW, albeit as lesser beings.

Sometimes it seems like the ultimate lie. I mean, wizards and muggles divide themselves with the wizards saying "we" can do magic. But clearly Muggles *can* do magic--Hermione is a Muggle by birth, her parents are Muggles, and she can do magic. But Wizards then claim her as their own. Hermione doesn't just stay in her own society as someone with a talent that many, but not all, her people have. If she did Muggle scientists would no doubt be studying her powers and figuring out how to give it to everyone. And they might very well succeed.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

Because of that I admit I don't much *feel* the racism/bigotry story in the Mudblood idea. I get it, obviously. Intellectually I know it's a slur and I understand that the people who use the word are dehumanizing the people they use it on. Many perpetrators of genocide have used just this sort of idea in judging races. However, it doesn't have quite the same kick to me as a real slur, since Muggleborns just don't seem to be in the same position. When Hermione first hears the word she says she can tell it's rude, but doesn't know what it means--of course, because grew up a Muggle.

And that, to me, is the heart of what I don't get about this debate. I immediately assumed, when I first read CoS, that JKR was making the racial analogy. Why? Because I *did* feel it. Because I had the experience of someone directing a racial slur at me and having to ask my parents what it meant, because I'd never heard it before.

Please note that I'm *not* calling you or anyone else a racist. What I *am* saying is that for me, the parallel was obvious because I had personal experience of something similar, which makes it easier for me to see.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I didn't think you were calling me racist. I actually really appreciate your pointing this out because not that you say it I think, "Duh...why didn't I think of that?" I do tend to project my own experience on Hermione in this case, seeing her as "one of me." But my emotional reaction isn't more valid than yours, especially in this case where we're not in Hermione's head.

I wonder, now that you say this, if I wouldn't see Hermione differently if the story had gone differently. Or not the story, but just if her character were shown acting a bit differently, or we saw something that looked like a widespread discrimination against Muggleborns. Because I think I could definitely understand a character going through what you've described--people do it all the time, especially if they move from one place to another and something that was normal in one place is considered strange or "other" in another.

I guess that's why I'm always struck by that place where Hermione gets the letter calling her a Muggle. There I feel exactly what you're describing. I mean, not her learning for the first time that there are such words, but that letter, if I were Hermione, would have made me feel much more on my guard. Yet at the same time I see why Draco can't use that term on the Quidditch Pitch. "Muggle" would have just been confusing to readers there, and anyway Muggle, like Squib, is a straightforward term as well as a slur. I think maybe it's that, as I said to Angua below, it's just that on some level I don't quite get the blood distinctions. Not that way I think I get them in many real life examples. I understand them intellectually, but I'm just not sure how wizards relate to them all. It's like...in English the words "quadroon" and "octoroon" exist and they also measure a blood count. But in modern times they're just weird. They don't have much of a meaning for most people. Racism still exists, it's just we don't currently describe it in those terms.

[gunderpants.livejournal.com]

From my perspective, to a lot of people who disagree with the 'this isn't a fair racism comparison' it really is a matter of them finding parallels between what they've seen of racism in their lives and what they see in the books. I can draw parallels between the history and current treatment of muggles and muggleborns to some of the older Australian's views towards Japanese citizens and the country after WW2.

I think the issue with racism is that there is no universal definition for race, or even if it exists in the first place in our world aside from a socially-created construct in order to segregate and oppress. However, it is very much to me a matter of xenophobia and making a scapegoat of one section of society in order to abuse privilege and maintain a status quo.

Incidentally, I did post about this last night, (http://theregoesyamum.livejournal.com/218284.html) if it helps clarify my points about it further.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, there's just not one way to say "this is racism" and "this is not" in terms of how racism manifests itself. There's even, as others have pointed out, the question of race being arbitrary. I think the use of the word "fair" is significant though too. I mean, just instinctively it seems like "this isn't a fair comparison" sounds like a defense, like either racism or the characters in the book are being insulted by it, which seems like it might be more about the fandom hobby of defending or condemning characters based on who they like. That's different than, say, some posts I've seen where someone might say, "It's not like racism...maybe it's more this other -ism to me because..." There in both cases it's discrimination and bigotry, it's just they're having trouble settling on what to compare it to in our world.

Which is good because you can flip around. Really, if it were a straight allegory there wouldn't be much to talk about. In fact, if it were an allegory maybe people really could talk about whether something was "fair" or not because they might just be disagreeing with what the author was saying about real life racism or racists. It wouldn't be interesting. Instead the WW is its own world that's messy and sometimes contradictory. But here you can pull all sorts of different historical things into it. The comparison to the Japanese in Australia, Aboriginal Australians, the disabled, recent immigrants--I can see aspects of all of them in the text. If anyone said I *couldn't* ever make comparisons to racism it would just be like...why not? I can compare it to anything I want if it helps me say what I'm trying to say!

[angua9.livejournal.com]

It seems to me, if I may brutally summarize your whole essay in a brief sentence, that the kind of "racism" that most bothers you in the book, the kind that catches your attention and makes you identify with the victim is the "racism" of the powerful against the weak -- the "racism" that cruelly points out real inferiorities and exploits them.

But perhaps for other people, the kind of "racism" that bothers them the most is the kind of "racism" that isn't true -- the kind that insists that Muggleborn wizards or wizards-of-part-Muggle-ancestry are inferior or unworthy in some way when they bloody well aren't, and tries to keep them out of the good Ministry positions, out of one's own family, and -- possibly -- dead.


It's like... which is worse: cruel truths or cruel untruths?


For me, the second type of "racism" resonates far more with the real-life racism that I've observed and read about: treating people as inferior, trying to make them inferior, when they aren't.
But I do recognize that real life racism is sometimes the other kind, too, as when one group of humans has vastly superior technology or weapons or education or something and uses that advantage to mistreat the other group.

[joyfulgirl1013.livejournal.com]

Well...but then you have to ask, is it true that muggles are inferior to wizards? Not in terms of not having shiny magical ability, but simply as human beings. I personally don't think they are, and think that Hermione should take a lot of pride in having come from muggle stock, instead of the reverse, which I think is what sistermagpie is pointing out. It's true that modern medicine can't really compete with being able to wave a wand and heal something, but I think that muggles have done pretty well considering all of their limitations, and I think that if they had the same capabilities that wizards had, they would have used them just as well. After all, you wouldn't call a blind person an inferior human being, would you? I don't agree that calling muggles inferior just because they can't do magic is at all fair, because I think the point that JKR has struggled so hard to make is that deep down, whether we're wizard or muggle, we're all people, and as people, we all make the same stupid mistakes and feel many of the same things. And that that is what should count, meaning that muggles, while unable to do magic, aren't really so inferior to wizards at all, though many wizards may like to think of them that way. After all, for all the magic present, the WW seems to experience many of the same problems that the muggle world does.

[joyfulgirl1013.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, actually. The worst thing you can even be in the HP universe is a muggle. In fact, I can't really think of one Muggle who has been kind and/or caring in any of the books. Not only do muggles not have magical powers, but they all act inferior in a very human sense.

I wonder, though, if this is something JKR plans to subvert. For all of the airs they put on about being better because they can do magic, I'd say the WW is in as bad a state as the muggle world ever got to. Not to mention, although we've never seen nice muggles, we've seen wizards acting just as cruel and depraved, if not more so, than the Dursleys, probably the worst examples of muggles in the books. What I think the WW suffers from is a lack of inventiveness, brought on by the fact that they don't really need to be because they always have magic to fall back on. There's the quiet voice of Arthur Weasley (one of the most tolerant characters in the books, I think). Although he's fascinated with muggles in a sort of head-patting, condescending way, I'd say there's genuine curiosity there. Curiosity brought about not by muggles themselves but by the sheer inventiveness of muggles. The things that fascinate him are airplanes, electricity, stitches, all things muggles have had to create by themselves in order to cope. He's fascinated by the way that muggles have had to change and adapt because wizards have never had to, they've just changed their surroundings to suit them.

And I feel as though this will have to be a major theme in book 7, just because the fall of Voldemort is probably going to rock the WW to its core, and they're going to need this spirit of adaptation in order to move forward and not backwards into what they were used to, which is the mistake they made the first time Voldemort was destroyed. It's why I think Arthur is slated to survive, I think, they're going to need him. ^^

[(Anonymous)]

I also notice that we've never seen a decent, kind, normal Muggle, aside from Hermione's parents--and even they are dentists. (g) The Muggles we see are Harry's relatives, who are all twits, the proprietor at Tom Riddle's orphanage, who, though not an ogre, did seem to be an alcoholic, and Tobias Snape, etc. If you ask me, just from looking at the books, Rowling shares the anti-Muggle prejudice. Granted, I don't really believe that, but the way she writes her books, she gives the impression that wizards are cool, and muggles are scum, mostly.

Re the Wizarding World/Muggle segregation--I personally think that is something Rowling came up with as a writer, just to keep herself from going crazy dealing with issues of technology. It was just easier to set the books almost entirely in the Wizarding World and to create a rule that 'never the twain shall meet' than to deal with wizards who use computers and have iPods at school. It would have destroyed the fantasy ambience, too.

It also sidesteps the issue that, if you give a Muggle a firearm, a Muggle is every bit as equal in a fight as a wizard who doesn't understand the principles under which firearms work. Want to get rid of the DE? Send a bunch of SAS snipers to one of their meetings. But that would have just ruined the story.

Chantal

[cutecoati.livejournal.com]

*gasp*

You mean that Arthur Weasley, with his obsession of Muggle objects the names of which he can neither remember nor pronounce (what is a 489539-syllable spell compared to the tongue-breaking difficulties of "electricity"), is acutally treating Muggles as, let's say, not quite house-trained pets? Patronising? But no, he's NICE to them! Nice! He's one of the Good Ones!

*kicks AW's butt for patting cuuuute Muggles' heads*

At least, the contempt Draco&company have for Muggles is shown more openly, not to say honestly... I, as a Muggle, would probably be more offended by the way AW and his kind treat me, and feel more threatened - as soon as you behave like a good dogMuggle, you're okay, but I wouldn't want to know what happened if you don't behave according to their ideas...

I won't go into the racism/not-racism debate (but I agree with most you said), because I'd never stop, then... although, it's probably a question of how much you generalise the concept of "racism" (or xenophobia or Herrenmenschen or whatever) - KKK and Nazis don't have much in common, either, historically speaking.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh--yes, it's really funny whenever Arthur is held up as what a modern non-racist person would be like. He's practically a charicature of what not to be like!

I'm becoming more and more interested in the parasitic quality of the WW, the way that when Muggles produce children *just as magically adept as Wizards* the biggest compliment a Wizard can give them is to call them a Wizard. And as far as we've seen not a single Muggleborn disagrees with them. It's very odd. I'm surprised there aren't any Muggles who wouldn't decide they were a Muggle who could do Magic rather than happily define themselves as one of "these" people instead of "those" people (when "those people" includes their parents). It seems like Wizards aren't a race so much as a bunch of Muggles who wanted to form a secret club. Or Muggles are Squibs who said "the hell with it." Though Muggles=Squibs brings up the argument that's considered very pro-DE, that Wizards are afraid they could lose their own Magic and that Muggles somehow are connected to that.

[arclevel.livejournal.com]

Brilliant post, Magpie. I agree with you pretty much everywhere, but your comments on Hermione especially stood out. I think a key moment for me in Hermione's attitudes towards Muggle society was in GoF, when she (repeatedly) informs Ron and Harry that "Muggle substitutes for magic" don't work at Hogwarts, meaning electrical devices, primarily. It's subtle and non-hostile, but it's so clearly the perspective of someone who's deeply a part of magical society. Who not only sees Muggles as "them", not "us" or even "mine" (IOW, my culture and people, if no longer me), but who has forgotten what the Muggle perspective was.

Because, of course, there are no such things as Muggle substitutes for magic, unless you're talking about rabbits and hats; there's only Muggle technology. (Notably, we have at least one clear magical substitute for Muggle technology, the Wizarding Wireless Network -- if the wizards invented it independently, why on earth would they call it that?) Muggles don't know that magic exists, so while they may laugh or daydream about being able to wave a wand and get rid of a problem (usually not the sort of problem that magic would be solved by technology), they would never say, "I need to listen in on someone who's in a building I'm not allowed to be in. Oh, if only I could do an eavesdropping spell! Well, let me try to come up with something I can use instead, maybe by setting up a very small microphone to transmit the signal elsewhere." Similarly, Muggles don't "get by" without magic, or "cope" without magic, as some of our more benevolent prejudiced characters (Hagrid? Molly? both?) have said. They live their lives, which happens to include inventing or using devices that make some aspect of life smoother or more interesting.

The fact that Hermione, by 14 and before she's started spending all summer away from home, has forgotten this, rather disturbed me. Has Dean, who is our one example of a Muggle-born student clinging to any aspect (football) of his old culture? Or Justin, who's apparently from the Muggle upper-crust and was supposed to attend its top school? Dennis Creevey?

And yes, I was pretty startled at Harry daring to hex Filch, and getting away with it. In that case, I could see Filch *not* doing anything severe or getting McGonagall or Dumbledore to, so as not to draw attention to the fact that he's a Squib, which is disturbing in its own right.

The entire Dumbledore-meets-the-Dursleys scene was a bit horrifying as well (though I admit to finding it hilarious, especially on the first reading), given how even people who addressed the bigotry of the Weasleys still seemed to give Dumbledore credit for seeing Muggles as equals. Admittedly, the only "evidence" for that was that he cared about Frank Bryce's disappearance. That pretty clearly would have been due to his knowing about the connection between Bryce and the Riddle family, though, not just generally reading Muggle papers to see who's disappeared or been murdered.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes I really think in many ways Hermione is the most disturbing character in the book--traitor! *waves Muggle flag* As I'm going through the thread the theme that keeps coming up again is one introduced early by I think agarttha? Who said the fear of Muggles is how alike to Wizards they actually are, like animals who can't do stuff but in some ways mimic Wizards. Even we as readers are duped into the Wizard way of thinking that someitmes Muggles give birth to a Witch, rather than thinking something a lot more daring--perhaps Muggles and Wizards are exactly the same, only some have talents others lack. How on earth can the Drs. Granger produce a girl who not only can do magic but is physically superhuman? Obviously it was *their genes* that did this, since they are her parents.

So what do Wizards do? They have the same attitude they always have. They whisk her away and take credit for her. She's one of theirs. And they disparage the land that she came from because they could never understand her, never give her what she needs. Even she starts to refer to Muggle technology, as you said, as substitutes for Magic. (Which really ticks me off--there's someone on HP4GU who insists on claiming that Muggles did not invent indoor plumbing, they *saw* Wizarding plumbing and tried to imitate it--it's ridiculous how angry it makes me when people disparage Muggle invention that way.) If Muggleborns wee known to Muggles, Muggles would study them. They'd figure out how they differed genetically and they'd probably figure out how to make more people magic. It reminds me of something Mike_Smith said in his recap of HBP. He hated Arthur's question of "how aeroplanes stay up," because as a scientist he thought that was the *point* of science. They stay up the same way birds stay up, which Muggles have learned from studying birds. It's not esoteric knowledge reserved for the few. You can look it up.

The WW depends on esoteric knowledge and not knowing how things work. They're basically superstitous and replace the way things really happen with stories that flatter themselves or warn people off places they're not supposed to go. Muggle Studies is probably mostly propaganda, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were taught by a non-Muggleborn, or a Muggleborn so old she's teaching based on vague memories of food rationing and listened to her first wireless in the WW.

One last thing I always find interesting is the way Draco Malfoy honestly seems to be the character who works the best in the Muggle world in fanfic. It's not just that he's the big Pureblood so it's funny. It's something about the characters where people can see him appreciating or thriving in the world more than others. I sometimes wonder if part of it is that probably by accident Rowling makes him the most respectful. Arthur's babbling about fellytones and Draco's telling wild stories at 11 about...helicopters?

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[alula-auburn.livejournal.com]

I agree with so much of this--the treatment of Muggles throughout makes me stubbornly resistant to straightforward acceptance of the blood purity issue as a successful analogy or as the moral core of the books. I get how it's supposed to work, but it just seems so half-heartedly put together. (My political statement is pastede on?) I just don't feel comfortable embracing the analogy when the "solution" is to assimilate as hard and as fast as possible, leaving your family in the dust.

And this is one of those issues I just don't think JKR thinks through to its logical conclusions. Although I wonder if that's deep down the reason she cut out Hermione's sister--because even on an emotional/intuitive level it highlighted an inherent tragedy to the story she doesn't want to grapple with.

This really makes me want to dig out my fanfiction featuring a Muggleborn who (among other things) is highly stressed by the fact that she had a choice to either cut everyone but her mother out of her life at age eleven or lie a lot. (She opted to lie, which at nineteen is catching up with her--it's a lot easier to pull off "scholarship to this weird school--no one's even heard of it, friend of Mum's put my name in" then, "It's, um, a secret where I work. Yes! And how are you?")

I don't think JKR knows what to do with the statute of secrecy--if it's about protecting Wizards from Muggle persecution, or pestering, or deeply ingrained anachronism that's no longer really explicable to anyone. And I don't think she's worked out how to balance the different pieces of the "racism" question she's slapped together. We have one real, tangible, distinct difference: the ability to do magic or not. So far, other than paying lip service to Muggle-baiting being wrong, treating people less than civilly (at the least) seems to be accepted by virtually ALL the characters, which makes it hard not to assume the authorial voice is in operation. Dumbledore at the Dursleys? Way to choose between what is easy (a quick sadistic thrill at the expense of people categorically defenseless against you) and what is right (acting with SOME modicum of responsibility in front of your damn student), DD.

Then we get the idea of no difference whatsoever--being Muggleborn obviously has no impact on your ability, so prejudice against Muggleborns is generally illustrated as bad because of that lack of difference, I think. It's bad because it's inaccurate. Which is a true and valid issue with real-world comparisons, but it seems to stop there and then becomes a pretty reductionist view of prejudice, IMO--it reminds me of people who talk about racism by saying "Oh, I don't even see skin color when I look at people--white, black, purple, polka dots--it's all the same!"

And it further allows JKR to avoid grappling with what assimilation to the wizarding world really means--because it sidesteps having to ask whether some anti-Muggleborn sentiments come from distinctive cultural differences, and that's a much trickier concept. That doesn't make it right, of course, but I think it becomes somewhat more comparable to, say, the spectrum of attitudes Americans have towards Islamic governments. (This is going to be a really problematic analogy--but at least I know it!). It's obviously wrong, wrong, wrong to go around harassing Muslims, to assume they're all terrorists, to claim to be an expert based on two passages of the transliterated Qu'ran you read, etc. But you have plenty of people who get that and who then feel that it's simply impossible to have a modern democratic government run off a system of religiously-derived law. And part of that is coming from American cultural values about separation of church and state, and part of it comes from mass confusion about how sharia law works and both those issues are inseparably mixed up in the rational/arguable and the emotional/intuitive for most people, I think.

Re: 1 of 2

[alula-auburn.livejournal.com]

And that last point leads back to getting to see if there might be some issues about Muggleborn culture and assimilation into the WW that are not about tongue-sticking out, better-than-you insults, but about actual, difficult-to-reconcile philosophical questions forced by a very peculiar set of interactions between two cultures. In my aforementioned unfinished story, the OC is a trainee healer at St. Mungo's and her mother is a nurse, and at one point she talks about being really tempted to sneak out one night with a bunch of potions, sneak into her mother's Muggle hospital and just fix some kids up--and the reasons she can't don't make intuitive or logical sense to her. If wizards do feel that Muggles pose a legitimate threat to them, that's not an illogical reason for them to be wary of her, and it's not about the "purity" of her blood in a genotypic sense, it's about the fact that she hasn't, and maybe can't, internalize the mores of the culture she lives in. The results of that prejudice can be just as damaging as any other, but I don't think that negates the questions that precede them. Hermione and SPEW sort of flirts with this, but it's such a problematic example that I don't know what to take from it (except a migraine).

This is the kind of thing that makes me think JKR would weep if she were forced to sit through an MFA workshop--not that I feel like getting the letters to tack on my CV in three weeks have given me, like, super speshul writer vision! (God, I wish), but these are the kinds of things she'd get asked over and over again. She's a million times better than I am at macro-plotting, but I don't think she pays as much attention to fully integrating her "theme" issues into the story. (I'm still not ready to buy the "power he knows not" fully, either, unless the first half of book seven involves Harry getting some damn therapy).

I also think that JKR is a very visual writer, which is interesting to me, because I'm not. I can "hear" dialogue pretty easily, but I have to work pretty hard and quite consciously to "see" a setting or even sometimes to visually "see" what a character looks like. So I admire that a lot. But at the same time, I think maybe in JKR's case, it sometimes lets her get away with superficiality. If she had to dig harder for some of the WW, I think it might be more complete and less of a cardboard stage set--a very pretty and shiny one I don't think I could build, but not something you spend much time looking at the back of. (Of course, having a hard-ass editor could work around that--I know people who write like that in workshop, and I've seen them do multiple drafts, and the difference is sometimes amazing, because they certainly have the capacity to work out the details, it's just not always intuitive for them).

Filch is the one adult Harry hexes in the hallway (public school boy humiliates janitor denied entry to public school due to circumstances of birth while other students laugh--great). If I were running Hogwarts, not only would Draco Malfoy get detention for using the word Mudblood but there would be hell to pay if any student hexed Argus Filch

Oh, yes. A million times yes. Hogwarts is a scary, fucked-up place. I think a large part of why I can't really like Dumbledore is that I think he's a terrible headmaster. I have enough problems with your character being solidified at age eleven, and having a whole house dedicated to EverSoEvil! Children. Dumbledore is supposed to be above this--it's certainly implied that he sees through silly things like that--so why the hell didn't he do anything useful during his tenure, besides conveniently arrange for Harry to have a showdown with evil every year? In some ways, that's the creepiest element of DD to me.

And I remember quite specifically saying "yuck" at Hagrid's line to the effect that the Dursleys are superlatively Muggle, to the nth degree in SS. And yeah, yeah, I don't buy half the stuff Hagrid says as factually accurate, but he didn't pull that usage out of nowhere. I, too, am always amazed by the adult readership who hasn't twigged to the fact that we are Muggles. And I still think it's a word that sounds inherently derogatory just by sound.

[morgan-d.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post, touching lots of bits that greatly disturbed me in the books.

She may, of course, in which case we just got into an even more disturbing area, where Hermione has internalized the Wizard contempt for Muggles completely and is actively trying to eradicate all her ties to her family and that world.

She has definitely put some serious distance between her and her parents, that's for sure. Apart from being in school most of the year, in the last three books we've seen her spend most of the holidays with the Weasleys -- it's been a while since I last studied the calendars, but I remember concluding she had not seen her parents for about a year and half once, or something like that. (I'm still waiting for an explanation of why in blazes Hermione spent the summer in the super-secret headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Talk about security, jeez.)

For years I've been mystified at Hermione's relationship with her parents. It's a question that, in my mind, should be central in a story concerning purebloods x muggleborns x muggles conflicts and bigotry. Unfortunately, we muggles are horribly represented in those books. There's no one there to defend our honor, really, except for the Dursleys.

Dumby told Harry that house-elves are meant to be pitied (paraphrasing here, I don't remember where I tossed my OotP book). I fear muggles don't deserve anything more in that philosophy.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Definitely. I think the one that struck me the most was in OotP when she's supposed to see her parents for Xmas, and then turns up announcing that she just sent her parents an Owl cancelling because "all the kids are staying in school." It seems like she's knows she's done something wrong-plus she's lied about what she's even doing. And her parents are probably sitting there with tickets. When I was that age I certainly wouldn't have been able to just cancel my parents plans, but it's not like they can come after her. Then, apparently less than two weeks after prying them off her at the train station, she's staying at the Weasleys!

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

Great post. I didn't follow the debate because, to use black_dog's brilliant euphemism, it got just a bit charged... but mostly I agree with the point that it seems a very surface description of racism (a convenient short-cut to press buttons, if one wants to be a bit malicious) but I never, as a reader, felt any sort of oppression on behalf of the Muggle-born, so it's difficult for me to relate it to the worst part of what the experience of racism is about, and react accordingly.

Incidentally, I really don't mind the analogy per se, even though it's pretty imperfect. I used it many times because it seemed like a useful quick descriptor of Draco's belief system -- but it really bothers me when it's played as a "card" to guilt-trip other people into censuring themselves when they disagree or find the issue more muddled -- "oh, no, you can't feel the hatred??? you big Nazi!!!" As with the Slytherin vs Gryffindor issue, there is a risk to whitewash "racism", but I think there's a lot of awareness of it in fandom, whereas the emotional manipulation is more insidious.

[discordiana.livejournal.com]

I forgot to add that I think a good comparison for DEs activities in real life is terrorism like Osama Bin Laden's. It is still xenophobic and hateful but it seems to best reflect the part where it's a minority which is going after a group that majority supports, against a dominant culture.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Malfoy says the DEs are going after "Muggles" and Harry says Hermione's a witch. On one hand, this is true. Malfoy is calling her a Muggle to suggest she is not "one of them," and Harry is rejecting that, which is good. Malfoy is defining "witch" by being related to magical folk, Harry is correcting him that "witch" is defined by having magical talent. Only it's one of those awkward situations where it's hard to correct the person without agreeing with him.

Heh, my sister and I used to joke about that passage, saying that Harry seemed to agree with Draco that they would "all have a laugh" if the DEs had Hermione showing off her knickers mid-air, but thought it was unlikely to happen since "Hermione is a witch". ;-) Susly though, it is a defence of his friend that sort of misses the point; the insult lies more in how Draco says he'd laugh at her knockers, than in calling her a Muggle.

It also reminds me a bit of some Swedish celebrity years ago, who greatly upset the homosexual communities, by loudly protesting some magazine's rumour that she was a Lesbian. They thought her vocal ascertion that she wasn't, was full of homophobia, because why would you become insulted at being labeled "Lesbian", unless you thought there was something wrong with being one? She responded that it was that she didn't want false information out about her, or something, and that if people thought she were, she would have a more difficult time finding herself a man. A defence that met mockery and derision, iirc. It's a sensitive topic, because of course, if you're a celebrity, you should be allowed to denounce false statement about yourself, but you kind of have to be careful, so that it won't be read as "how dare you think that I am one of those!"

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

See, that's the trouble with taking kids out of the Muggle world. Harry doesn't watch Seinfeld, so he doesn't know to add the disclaimer: "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

If I feel like reading HP as an analogy of anything, it seems to me that the prejudices and dynamics displayed by the wizarding world fit a class pattern better than a race pattern.

Muggles are the majority, yet many wizards feel totally within their rights to look down upon them, use them as playthings, interfere in their institutions, as aristocrats have felt it to be their right to mistreat peasants for centuries. But recently, Muggles have become uppity with all that technology and stuff, and they need to be controlled! (One could argue, from that position, that Voldemort and his followers would have to have more respect for Muggle accomplishments than e.g. Arthur Weasly. They will fear it and fight it, but not dismiss it as cute.)

In this context, Muggle-born wizards and witches would be like the nouveau-riche, offending to traditionalists because they do not fit in their world of hereditary privilege. Poor wizarding families like the Weasleys would be impoverished aristocrats, secretly selling the family silver, yet still regarded, by their peers, as "better" than commoners, even (or especially) wealthy commoners.

It seems to suit quite well what I have read so far about 19th century English notions about nobility. "Noble blood" does not make a different race, yet it is assumed to convey skills and attitudes, which are then used as justification for the one thing it really conveys: privilege.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting! Especially since it does sort of fit in the way the books are talked about even by "Muggles" reading them, where it's accepted that wizards are an elite. One side has different ideas about the elite in terms of one side thinking people can earn their way in by being the right sort while the other side thinks you can't just be the right sort by talent, you need the right parents.

It is something that I think accidentally comes across in the way some of the most bigotted characters have dealt with Muggles so far. We've seen the DEs literally attacking Muggles. Draco, of all people, is the one example we have of a wizard talking about Muggle technology like it's cool. Then we've got Arthur and Hagrid who reduce the whole thing to a kid making mud pies. And we've got more Muggle-baiting from that side as well, with Dumbledore and the Weasleys and the Order interfering with Muggles more than individual DE characters.

[kylandra.livejournal.com]

I love what you've written here. It is a really complex issue, that Rowling often doesn't handle very well or completely.

While obviously I also wouldn't say that the more subtle prejudice exhibited by Hagrid or the Weasleys or whatever is nearly as bad as Voldemort's brand of it, it does chap my ass how people will never so much as acknowledge the prejudice from people like the Weasleys. It's like Slytherins and DEs are the only ones that are allowed to be prejudiced because they're "evil" while these more subtle forms of prejudice are just ignored.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, this drives me crazy. I mean, obviously I think it's fine to point out the difference between the Weasleys etc. and the DEs and the fact that they're trying or whatever, but you'd think people hadn't noticed that in the real world we mostly have to deal with the more subtle forms of racism.