Racism in HP

[sistermagpie]

It seems this is the subject du jour on lj today and on F_W, and it's the thread over there that got me wanting to put this down. Yes, it's the old Mudblood issue and that word it's always supposed to be the parallel for...



Dr. Seuss wrote a book called The Sneetches about these...sneetches. It's been a while since I read it, but this is what I remember. Some had stars on their bellies and others didn't. The Star-bellied ones looked down on the other ones. Then the non-starred ones got this machine to give them stars. Now they were just as good as the other ones. So the original Star-bellied ones got rid of their stars, and said having stars was bad. And so on and so on, until they finally must have realized how random it was to base one's worth on a star you did or didn't have on your belly. The idea was to point out the superificality of race--hating someone because they happen to have skin a different color is stupid. If your skin was a different color you wouldn't be any diffferent.

That's a fine point, but historically speaking there is a lot more that goes into racism. Yes, there's the fear or the other and the fact that these "other" people can be identified because they look different. But what it avoids is the very real conflicts that happen between people, especially when different groups of people find themselves living together. This is why it amazes me that sometimes it seems like the same people who will get into lifelong wars with other fen over some disagreement about canon, or a fic, or another lj-er will then turn around and act like racism can be reduced to the Seussian idea. I mean, do they consider their own hatred of whatever group of people they hate based on something as superficial as what they look like? No, they probably could articulate real reasons they don't like them, just as a racist could. In my experience, racists don't say they hate people because of what they look like, they have some explanation for what "those people" are like and the danger they represent and what they are planning to do to them.

This is probably especially true when it comes to immigrant groups, which came up on this lj before. Different cultures can disagree-and disagree seriously. You can't put an end to that disagreement by simply telling one or the other side to look past the other person's accent or skin color. That sometimes just ignores the real differences between the people that need to be acknowledged and compromised on and worked out. It doesn't help to pretend everyone's exactly the same in ways they *aren't* exactly the same. People, historically, tend to get along with groups of a certain size and after that it breaks down. The point, it seems to me, isn't that everybody has to like each other the same or like everybody's culture the same, just that everyone has to learn to live together.

So back to the Mudblood thing...it bothers me when it's considered just so easy that the word Mudblood is supposed to be the word N***** (Apologies for the potentially twee use of asterisks, but I figure we all know the word I'm using and if there's anybody who just really doesn't want to look at it in reading why not make it easier), thus Draco and Young Snape are exactly like whatever person you've ever known/seen/read about who used that word. Hermione, is thus supposed to be black in this context.

This bugs me because racial slurs have meaning based on culture and the history of a society. You can't just say a word has the same meaning as N***** when the history that produced that word doesn't exist. I mean, let's look at Hermione. Growing up the only minority group she could be said to belong to is the female one (which isn't technically a minority, I don't think, but you know what i mean). She's a white English girl who lives in England. At 11 she travels to a completely different society and is called this name. She doesn't know what the name means until it is explained to her. She has no emotional reaction to it--completely different from a person who grew up as a minority who not only knows the meaning of the word but has an emotional reaction to it. To me saying it's the same completely dismisses the complex experience of someone who is a minority (not that I can speak about that experience, since I'm not one myself). It seems sort of like a "black when it's convenient" situation. It would be like if I went to a country where somebody called me a Mudblood as a really insulting term for an American. Yes I would be insulted, but I would probably think the person was the one with the problem, not me. Especially if everybody else stood up for me.

We've seen signs of culture clash with Hermione, sure, with her SPEW campaign. Harry, too, is a "foreigner" in the WW. Muggleborns have been singled out, that I remember, by the basilisk and by Durmstrang, which doesn't accept them. This, to me, still doesn't not come close to recreating institutionalized racism because there's just too many differences. The basilisk going after them is scary, but it's part of an old legend. It might have been trained to go after Irish students because Salazar hated the Irish. Durmstrang, yes, represents something they are barred from, though it still doesn't seem like that shocking of an idea. To me it seems more like the school only accepts citizens. Muggles, being citizens of the country that the Wizarding World spends all its time hiding from and obliviating with Memory Charms, are possibly considered too much of a risk. So yes, it's something Hermione is excluded from, but apparently schools are allowed to be exclusive that way. Hogwarts, a school of equal prestige, invites Hermione despite her name not being on any lists-lists that indicate Hogwarts is rather exclusive itself. I mean, does everyone go there? Because it seems like once Hermione (and the other Muggleborn) are finished Hogwarts they will have equal opportunity for just about every job we've seen in the WW (I'm not sure about MoM, but then as of now one can't be president of the US if one wasn't born here either). She will be, it seems to me, one of the privileged members of Wizarding Society because of her education.

At school, she isn't a second class citizen. Her SPEW campaign isn't popular (with Purebloods *or* Muggleborns, it seems-I wonder if we'd have seen more trouble if the Muggleborns had rallied round her, creating a more obvious ethnic division?), but it doesn't seem to inspire anti-Muggleborn reactions. She's a prefect, proving the school considers her for honors just as they would a Pureblood. She's given a time turner in third year, not to mention passes to special parts of the library, proving that not only is she not discriminated against by the school she's given special privileges. The only time she's ever faced any anti-Muggleborn prejudice is from the one character, Draco. This is rude of Draco, but without the backup of the rest of the kids, institutionalized racism and a history of oppression I just don't think it has that kind of power. You just can't divorce words from their context that way--which is why someone calling me a racial epithet is not the same as me saying one to a person of color. Similarly, if a non-white man calls me a "white bitch" the word "bitch" has very different meaning than the word "white."

So yeah, I just don't see a situation in the books where I feel comfortable saying Mudblood=N**** in any but a few ways. This isn't a defense of Draco's use of it, obviously. It's just yet another way that I feel uneasy about the whole "racism" aspect of the books. I mean, this is 5 books now (some of which are quite long) that deal with a villain who has these ideas about race, and characters who call others Mudbloods and think blood should be pure, and problems between other races...yet in all those books we've never gotten any real idea just what any possible anti-Muggleborn sentiment is really about. It just seems to come down to Voldemort or Draco or Snape saying Mudblood. If that was all there was to it, I don't see how it would be that much of a problem. Sometimes the weird thing for me is that I feel like I understand the reverse much more, where the Slytherins have started seeming more like Jewish stereotypes as the books go on! (No, I'm not saying they are Jews, or that JKR is anti-Semitic, just that the impression I get of them sometimes reminds me of that historical stereotype, despite the sign that occasionally flashes Hitler Youth over Draco's very blond head without looking seriously at those children either). It's just a mishmosh of images to me--the rich, cunning Jews who are also Nazis so it's okay to dehumanize them, along with the Klansman and the black person, and maybe a fascist too...as if the actual history and cultural context and beliefs of these different groups doesn't make that much difference. I mean, I don't really see how Voldemort is that much like Hitler really, when the WW doesn't seem to have ever have been Nazi Germany, something that was tied to its own time and place.

Comments

[pedantic-celia.livejournal.com]

I do feel in a way that people are putting their own cultural interpretations onto the whole story. And I have thought before now that if these books had been published in the 1930s, and had been avaliable in Germany, it wouldn't take much to imagine that our heroes were the noble Nazis, while the Death Eaters were the Jewish Elite. Perhaps make Harry blonde, and you've got a deal. Look at the canon description of Professor Snape - isn't he the very image of the Nazi propaganda poster depictions of Jews? Even today, quite a few people in fandom have had him down as being Jewish. And we've had it drilled into our heads that we're supposed to hate him.

The trouble then, is simply that it's really too broad to apply totally to any on thing in particular - or rather, to not in some way apply to pretty much anything with a hero and a villain.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yes--this is something that I hope will ultimately be something that turns out to be a strength in the series. I mean, there have been times in conversations in fandom where I'll be talking to someone who sounds exactly like whatever character they claim to hate. So I've no trouble imagining that there are plenty of bullying children out there who read the books and see themselves as Harry, the underdog, battling all those *other* bullies.

The bits of more information we got on Purebloods in the last book made them that much more interesting to me--that they were this small group, all mostly related. I suppose we don't know enough about Snape's background to know exactly how far back his family goes, but his use of the word Mudblood shows he probably does identify himself as a Pureblood. (Plus he seemed close to Malfoy, Sr.) Knowing that they were related made them seem like even less of a race and more like--well, someone recently compared them to the Amish but any group like that would do.

[the-gentleman.livejournal.com]

I saw an interesting documentary a while ago about middle-class white supremacists/seperatists, and they talked for a bit on Harry Potter. Apparently, the two children (blue-eyed blonde girls no more than 6 years old) recognised Jewish traits in the Goblins... Certainly they're a bit of a joke on the "gnomes of Zurich"- wizened old men controlling the wealth of the nations from their underground caverns.

I'm certain that Fudge is paralleled by Chamberlain (both as a superficial "Guilty Man" reading, and the revisionist "best of what there was" reading). The same goes for Dumbledore as Churchill, from the excellent wartime leader who's useless at best and a warmonger at worst in peacetime, to tactics such as witholding information to keep the enemy from knowing he knows. I'm working on that essay at the moment, and a revision of my older essay on Fudge=Chamberlain. That leaves Voldemort=Hitler, but whereas their views don't work, I think there's a possibility of his first death being a Munich Putsch- and now he's attempting different aims and methods. Then again, his tactics belong to those of a terrorist group, whilst his xenophobic (rather than racist) tendencies edge towards that of conservative/right-wing groups in England.

To be honest, I think that it's a great talent on JK's side that she can create something that doesn't immediately fall in to the category of analogy. In the same way, James can be compared to both Harry and Draco, and Harry can identify with Snape at the same time, making parallels harder to place between the two generations. That speaks of a very mature standard of writing, which is inevitably going to cause us, with our human nature to categorise and pigeon-hole, a great deal of stress...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I think that it's a great talent on JK's side that she can create something that doesn't immediately fall in to the category of analogy.

I think that's definitely the best thing to aim for as well. I think I get more frustrated by fans' attempts to make analogies than anything else--particularly when an analogy is used to shut down discussion. For instance, to me it seems to require almost more explanation for why some wizards aren't suspicious of Muggleborns than why some wizards are--they grow up in a world in hiding from a larger world by which they are literally surrounded. So when people come up with logical theories about how the DEs or Purebloods see Muggles and Muggleborns as a threat I don't understand why this frightens some people, or how people can act like seeing the possible logic they see in their xenophobia makes one scary onesself.

Perhaps part of the problem is up until now we haven't gotten much insight into how the "other side" thinks, so it's easier for people to project their own ideas on to them when they shouldn't. Really the WW must have its own history with ideas to fit it, even if there are plenty of good parallels to our own world. And of course, racist stereotypes are based on qualities that are scary in themselves: people hoarding money and controlling things behind the scenes, people who are violent, people who worship strange gods. It's not surprising people recognize these traits in fictional creatures too.

I also resist any attempts to parallel the two generations too much, just as you describe. Similarities between students are interesting, but everyone is a completely different person. Traits are combined and recombined all over the place. In fact, so far whenever you're led to think one person is exactly like someone else, especially someone in their family, you're often in for a surprise, which is good.

I'm looking forward to that essay on that essay-and I like the idea of his death being the Munich Putsch. I was nervous (in a good way) at the end of OotP with all the talk of regular wizards getting ready to "get" the Dark Wizards in their neighborhood--the society seems very vulnerable to dark influences. I'm just not yet sure how Voldemort himself can/will make it work to his advantage.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

You make a nice point about how JKR creates issues that resist direct analogy to the real world. There are certainly racial markers in the whole Mudblood/Pureblood issue, but I sometimes think the issue could equally be about class rather than ethnicity. So the Purebloods represent a kind of old-Tory snobbery about striving members of the middle class who want to break into their charmed (so to speak) social circles and institutions. The Goblins do sometimes seem to carry disturbing ethnic markers, but let's call them Scots, to sort of neutralize that. The House Elves often seem like a 19th century rich-man's caricature of the "laboring classes."

You're right that we get very little sense of the real political or sociological meaning of any of the differences that seem to agitate this world. Magic itself often seems like a sort of irrelevant ornamental thing that makes life a little bit more fun and attractive but doesn't really change any of the fundamental issues people face -- it's mostly a matter of identity politics, maybe, or to return to the original analogy, a matter of manners and class snobbery.

Actually -- and I think we may have chatted about this once before -- if one looks for political analogies, the Wizarding World mostly feels like a kind of micromanaged nanny-state, a sort of parody of '50's or '70's socialism with its endless rules and regulations trying to shape up a fundamentally cynical and unruly population. I got this impression especially from GoF, and especially from the scenes at the tent-camp at the Wizarding World Cup.

So maybe one way to think about these differences is in the context of postwar or late 70's Britain -- the Purebloods are poisonous reactionaries, yes -- viciously resistant to their eroding status. But from their own perspective they're also skeptical and long-suffering spectators of the follies of do-gooders like Dumbledore, bureaucratic egalitarians like the Weasleys, and wooly-minded progressives like Hermione. They're contemptuous of the populist politics that made this all possible, including manufactured popular heroes like Harry.

And Voldemort is Maggie Thatcher! By no means a pureblood, by no means entirely on the same wavelength in many respects, but perhaps a useful instrument for eroding communitarian tyrrany and restoring some respect for wealth and hierarchy . . .

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

pedantic_celia brought up the Pureblood=class issue on her lj today and I agree-it does many times seem very much about class. And even with things like the goblins, the Nazis pretty much characterized Jews as goblins and probably would have happily admitted they were like goblins, so JKR's using goblins probably naturally brings up those same associations.

So maybe one way to think about these differences is in the context of postwar or late 70's Britain -- the Purebloods are poisonous reactionaries, yes -- viciously resistant to their eroding status. But from their own perspective they're also skeptical and long-suffering spectators of the follies of do-gooders like Dumbledore, bureaucratic egalitarians like the Weasleys, and wooly-minded progressives like Hermione. They're contemptuous of the populist politics that made this all possible, including manufactured popular heroes like Harry.

I just wanted to say I love this image! It always strikes me that the Malfoys and the Black seem to be the families that are the most interested in history--though I think Ernie MacMillan also claims his family is Pureblood going back many generations. Identifying onesself as Pureblood almost assumes you have a sense of history, while the "other side" seems relentlessly forward-looking, like the Weasleys. Things linked to the past are often bad ideas holding people back. In reality I think the best way is the middle one, as I can't believe that Purebloods who have a real sense of history don't have a lot to offer besides bigotry. It would be better to learn the lessons of the past while making things better. They just haven't found the right way to do that yet!

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

WORD on pretty much everything. I think Celia has a very good point too, in her comment, about the culture you grow up in influencing what analogy you read into the "anti-muggleism", or whatever we should call it. Like for instance, American seem to be very prone to read in "American" racism, which has it's own special, very colour-centric, history, equaling Death Eaters with Nazies, while I'm sure Europeans are more inclined to see it with European eyes and associating it to Nazism and "anti-immagracy", and see Death Eaters as "New Nazies" rather than Clansmen. (And by "New Nazies", I mean, in case I translated the word wrong, the ones who are Nazies today, a quite insignificant minority, in other words.)

Which pretty much leads me to the only point I was going to make.

when it's considered just so easy that the word Mudblood is supposed to be the word N*****

Personally I've always thought that "Mudblood" must refer to a different slur than "the N-word", just because it's just doesn't sound like the N-word, phonetically, I mean. So I assumed it allured to a British racist slur, that perhaps had the word "blood" in it too, or that sounded more similar, at any rate. Though I admit fully that the only reason I thought so, was because of the Swedish translation. It's "Smutsskalle" in the translation, which literary trnaslated would mean "dirty head", and it allures quite clearly to the in Sweden well-known racist insult "Svartskalle" (which means "black head"). The term can basically be thrown at anyone who doesn't look Swedish, not exclusively black persons. Since it's very unusual for Swedes (who have been Swedes for generations back, that is) to have naturally black hair, the slur refers to the hair colour.

Anyway, I know I shouldn't have put so much stock in the translation, but I did think that the translator had thought the term to be a more precise Swedish equvalent to a British slur (which would in that case have been phonetically similar to "Mudblood".

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating--the black head thing.:-) Seems like that was one place where the translator brought something to the text.

It's always seemed to me that JKR just wanted to pushe the whole blood issue. She knew she could make Draco a Pureblood but then needed the opposite of that and this was the best she could come up with. (Stupidest line in CoS the movie is Hermione tearfully explaining to Harry that Mudblood means "dirty blood," as if that much isn't obvious...) Muggles, by contrast, don't seem to be associated with dirt or infection so much as just being alien.

The funny thing is the way people throw around Klansmen and Nazis as if they are the exact same thing. Currently in America and in Europe we do have Neo Nazis or White Supremists, which is another possible connection. But then again it just doesn't quite fit because Neo Nazis have their own history as well. I think the DEs could very well be like modern fascist groups in England, I'm just still not quite sure how they...work. Particularly with the kids. As you said, these people are a pretty small minority. To be honest, where I'm from the main association one has with white supremists/neo-nazis/skinheads is: LOSERS. Serious losers. And yeah, the Slytherins are all losers in their own way, but they don't really seem like that type of loser.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heheh, much fangirl love for this essay, man~:)
I love your insistence on context, because I feel like context is the first thing to go when people fling around rhetoric, especially in charged topics like 'racism'. There's often a lot of over-simplification going on, and it's near impossible to break through people's own emotional responses to an unrelated idea/context once it sets in. That's probably the main reason why I've always felt amorphously uncomfortable with some people's intense focus on Draco's huge racism and how that makes him the equivalent of 'Hitler's Youth' or whatever-- 'cause like, we don't know -what- it means, exactly, besides the fact that he's obnoxious.

I'm not trying to defend him-- I don't play that game with anyone but Harry, hehe-- point is, he's just playing at being 'a Malfoy'-- which seems to involve believing all the family dogma. It seems less related to 'race against race' than 'family against family'. Malfoys dislike Muggleborns. It's not wizards, it seems like-- but a (limited) number of well off, Pureblood wizards. The wizarding world seems something less than militant, to me. If anything, they're too staid and desperate for preservation of the status quo.

Usually prejudice involves the feeling of a threat of some sort. It doesn't seem like the wizarding world in general sees Muggleborns as a threat-- I mean, they're more powerful than Muggles, and -as- powerful as the Muggleborns. There might be some classism-type issue where the really uppity ones think Muggleborns aren't 'elite' or whatever, but sheer -hatred- doesn't make sense except in-- surprise!-- Draco's case.

Because this particular Muggleborn is simply better than him. She gets better grades, more priviledges, Harry's friendship, etcetc whatever. This must be preposterous to Draco. He's a pureblood aristocrat! He's a Malfoy! She's nothing! So yes, he's defensive and obnoxious because she -is- a threat. Draco seems to require some provocation just like any other boy-- Weasley provokes him first (taunting him) & Harry provokes him first (rejecting him) & Hermione provokes him by 'flaunting' her superiority (the nerve!) and well, he seems to pick on Neville, but I think the squib thing makes him an easy target and Draco -is- a cowardly bully.

Anyway. Yeah. People project a lot, and I don't think much can be done about it, but this is still a really reasonable comeback~:)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that does get frustrating especially because I feel like the fact that way Draco uses the word Mudblood is one of the more realistic and intelligent ways that Mudblood is used. The first time he uses it is when Hermione humiliates him in a very specific way, and this comes after we've seen Draco's father use Hermione to humiliate him in a very specific way. The Quidditch Pitch scene, to me, is the perfect continuation of the scene in B&B. We literally see Draco learning the lessons his father teaches in reaching for that word, which is never spoken by Lucius but heavily heavily implied. So it's totally realistic--when Draco feels insecure and humiliated he wants to make someone else feel the same way. He feels like whatever he thinks a Mudblood is.

The Neville thing is kind of interesting because think of that in terms of what Lucius has taught. Draco says the Weasleys are a disgrace to Purebloods but I don't really think he sees them that way. I mean, I think he's angry that they're not in his club but I think he respects them as fairly competent. Neville, otoh, is borderline squib early on and if you need to believe Purebloods are superior what do you do with that? Isn't Neville, in some ways, something Lucius would consider a disgrace to Purebloods? The Weasleys may use their gifts to the wrong ends in his view, but they have the gifts.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it may be that the WW in general doesn't see Muggleborns as a threat, but I do think that the old-school Purebloods do. In Madame Malkin's Draco says that "they just haven't been brought up to know our ways", and it's mentioned at one point that Salazar Slytherin believed that Muggleborns couldn't be trusted.

It does make some sense. Sirius notes that there are hardly any Purebloods left, and they're all inter-related. Basically, half-bloods and Muggleborns are taking over and those who actively seek to maintain the "purity" of their blood are becoming vastly out-numbered. They undoubtedly feel threatened.

As for Draco, I think it's probably significant that the MB word doesn't fly until book two. Hermione certainly beat him- and indeed everyone else, too- academically throughout first year. This does not seem to trouble Draco overmuch. In fact, he never even addresses Hermione in book one. But after Draco has, number one, been read the riot act by his father for not making better marks than a Muggleborn and, number two, witnessed the rather blatant favoritism towards Gryffindor at the leaving feast, he lashes out when Hermione seeks to humiliate him. It's significant that he makes a point of claiming that the teachers play favorites. Dumbledore certainly does. Snape certainly does, too- towards his own Slytherins. He is the only teacher whose favoritism is addressed, because the books are from Harry's point of view and Harry, like most kids, sees favoritism that works to his advantage as being right and due, and not favoritism at all.

Going on a tangent

[anehan]

My mother teaches Finnish and local customs to groups of immigrants, and just yesterday she told us this story:

In Finnish language there's vowel harmony, which is very difficult for foreigners to learn. My mother said she has explained it again and again, and still her students don't understand it.

The group she was telling us about consists of immigrants from the Middle East. Some of them are Muslims, others are Christians. One day they got into an argument, a verbal fight really, where the Muslims were on one side and the Christians were on the other side. The topic of the fight was... vowel harmony. For use it sounds really stupid, but for them it was painfully real.

So, what I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that that kind of conflicts are never easy, and it's really difficult to understand them from the outside.

My mother's students eventually got over it. They are all strangers in this country, so naturally they stick together.

Re: Going on a tangent

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's almost interesting we don't see that more with the Muggleborns, really. I'd think you'd see it all the time. Imagine going into a world where you had two groups of students from essentially different countries. I can't imagine the Muggleborns wouldn't form some sort of identity.

That story's also a great example of how hard it is to understand the conflicts in other countries...like, just as it's intersting JKR hasn't chosen to go the route of Muggleborns forming a group, she also doesn't deal with Muggle prejudice much, except at the Dursleys. Wizards don't seem to much notice what race someone is, but Muggleborns would. I don't know how exactly that would have to play out, but it could. Would wizards be confused by it the way Muggleborns might be confused by caring whether someone was Pureblood for 2 generations or 12?

[ex-lonicera600.livejournal.com]

A word about racism in Germany. I can't speak for the Nazi aera, because I haven't lived then, but today's racism presents itself to me as follows (and I have to state here for good order's sake that I DO NOT share these opinions, but just present them as I perceive them in 'the little man in the street', OK?):

We don't want Africans, Arabians, Asians etc. immigrating into Germany in large numbers. They are dark-skinned, praying to different gods and are uneducated. So we call them nasty names.

BUT: there's no objection to e.g. Japanese people living in Germany. Düsseldorf is the second largest Japanese community worldwide outside of Japan.

ALSO: we have strong objections to immigrants from Russia and the Balkan countries.

Which means to me, that in fact the problem is not with the looking different part (does not apply to Russians and Balkan descendents in most cases), not with religion (as Germany really is very open for all kinds of religious belief systems and doesn't pay much attention to any of them anymore anyway), but just with the being uneducated problem, which doesn't apply to the Japanese (and in part not to Russians).

As it is nearly impossible to die of starvation in Germany even if you're homeless (homeless people even have a RIGHT to hotel accommodation if they can't find a place in a shelter) as the government is obliged by law to keep everyone alive, the question arises: how is this paid for? With taxes of course.

So, large numbers of people similarly educated as we immigrating, means less job possibilities for us - as they'll probably be willing to accept lesser wages. And large numbers of uneducated people immigrating, means more taxes for German citizens as their upkeep has to be paid for when they can't find a job.

This explains the general total acceptance of the Japanese (although they ARE different looking), because they do not come seeking jobs or social security money, but they found companies in Germany and therefore CREATE jobs and tax money.

So what looks like total idiocy (we don't like them because they are different) boils down to the very real and existential question of money. Which boils down to the simple problem of survival.

The same may be true for the WW. Wizards have been oppressed and even killed by Muggles in earlier centuries. Muggles nowadays could be a very real threat to wizardkind with their having nuclear powers now etc. And what is a Mudblood other than a Muggle with wizard powers? By accepting Mudbloods into the WW society they split themselves wide open to the danger of general Muggle awareness as more and more relatives (at least parents and siblings) of Muggle-born wizards will know about this other world. And where do the loyalties of Mudbloods lie anyway? If the worlds collide some day which side will they choose? Will they withdraw from the Muggle world or will they join their ranks and make their wizard powers available to the oppressing majority? Again a very real problem of survival as I see it.

Being the one, who is threatened you of course hate to live in fear. So you hate the ones causing the problem. And you call them nasty names. Which is the only underlying similarity in all of this I can see.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's a brilliant explanation--yes! And thank you for the German example because it does perfectly illustrate that it always comes down to *something.* I remember reading something recently about America, for instance, where they talked about how post WW2 the rules about immigration and situation in Asian countries resulted in most immigrants from Asia being educated--thus the stereotype we have of Asians beng brainy. Educated parents tend to have educated children, etc. So again it came down not to just people being different but certain qualities being associated with different groups for often mundane reasons.

And your description of the possible problems with Muggleborns makes so much sense to me...it's what gets me frustrated about people who feel uncomfortable about people who "defend" the DEs. I mean, I am more confused as to how there are wizards who aren't suspicious of Muggleborns for just this reason--you said it perfectly. A Muggleborn is not a wizard, s/he is a muggle with magical powers and an allegiance to the Muggle world, just as a Squib is not a Muggle but a Wizard without Magic and an allegiance to the Wizarding World. That makes it even more interesting that the most pro-Muggle family we see, the Weasleys, comes across to me as sort of condescending, like an early 20th century reformer who talked about other races like they were children.

This gets into some of the things ajhalluk talked about yesterday, which is how views on race change so much it's hard to point to one attitude and call it racist. When a book like To Kill a Mockingbird, which at the time was considered so daring in its message of tolerance, can be threatened with being banned because it's racist, you just have to wonder. Many people just don't seem to want to accept that what it means to be "racist" changes throughout time. Things that we consider offensive today would have just been accepted as normal fifty years ago, even by reformers!

[ackonrad.livejournal.com]

ALSO: we have strong objections to immigrants from Russia and the Balkan countries.

...

but just with the being uneducated problem, which doesn't apply to the Japanese (and in part not to Russians).

As someone from a Balkan country who studies in Germany but doesn't intend to remain there, I strongly object to this.

Do you really think we are uneducated? Until now, I haven't noticed my results at uni to be any worse than those of the German students. I could name you any capital of any single German Bundesland, which cannot be said for my German colleagues. I can do Maths as good as any German student, I speak German as good as the German students speak English, and German is not the only language I speak. I fail to see why the German students should be more educated than me or any other of the other Bulgarian students I know. Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'd really like to know what makes me less educated than the Germans.

I think that the problem doesn't have anything to do with education, but with money. Germany accepts Japanese because Japan is a rich country and the Japanese would bring their entire money in Germany. Russia and the Balkan countries aren't rich (I wouldn't call my country poor, even though I know that many people here think so) and we are of no use for the Germans for this reason. Most Russians come here to earn money and spend it in Russia, not in Germany. That's the problem - money. Not education. There are quite poor educated Germans, too - I've met some.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but your assumption that I should think of myself as someone less educated than someone from Germany just because of my nationality left me quite stunned.

[tiranog.livejournal.com]

Hi, there!

Loved your post. This whole Mudblood thing has totally bewildered me for a while now.

yet in all those books we've never gotten any real idea just what any possible anti-Muggleborn sentiment is really about.

This is so true! What really puzzles me is the fact that Harry isn't referred to as a Mudblood. I mean, I know both his parents were wizards, but his mother was a Muggleborn wizard. If the issue is the purity of one's blood, wouldn't having a mixed blood mother make your blood as 'muddied' as the person from the Muggle home? It isn't like those Muggle genes are ever going to go away. Harry's immediate family are all Muggles and he was raised by them. To me, he is just as much of a 'Mudblood' as Hermione. It seems really strange that Draco has never capitalized upon this point, which makes me think that it really is just the ability of both your parents to do magic that is the issue and that only further confuses the issue because it has nothing to do with the 'blood' at all.

I just don't think JKR thought all these issues through before she started that Mudblood theme. She wanted Draco and his ilk to have a nasty name to call the Muggleborn kids, so she made this up, never considering all the aspects of it.

Sometimes the weird thing for me is that I feel like I understand the reverse much more, where the Slytherins have started seeming more like Jewish stereotypes as the books go on! (No, I'm not saying they are Jews, or that JKR is anti-Semitic, just that the impression I get of them sometimes reminds me of that historical stereotype, despite the sign that occasionally flashes Hitler Youth over Draco's very blond head without looking seriously at those children either).

This is another salient observation. From tSoSS, it was clear that the Slytherin House was feared by the others not so much because it was evil, but because it was smarter. Prior to Harry and Hermione's arrival, the Slytherins had taken the house cup for four or five years in a row, proving excellence in academics, behavior, and sportsmanship. This couldn't all have been the result of Snape's nespotism towards his own house. If Snape were taking points off all the other houses and unfairly awarding them to his own, surely the other house heads and teachers would have taken revenge against Slytherin. I think the only thing we can assume here is that the Slytherin kids do have that drive to achieve that other kids don't have. And, historically, this trait has been associated with the Jewish community, sometimes in a positive way, sometimes in a negative way. But the similarity is there. You know that the Slytherin kids are going to grow up to be the lawyers, the accountants, the Ministers, and possibly the medical providers, all the high-education, high-renumeration careers that are often filled by Jewish people, at least in my community. And the WW's fear of the Slytherins often seems to mirror some cultures historical mistrust and mistreatment of the Jewish community.

Which makes it pretty strange that the house that would be most easily identified with the Jewish community would also be the house that seems to be representing the facist tendencies in the WW, i.e. all that Mudblood crap. Once again, I feel that it is probably a bad planning job on JKR's part, which has been left to the fanfic authors to try to rationally explain! LOL

Anyway, thanks for the great post. Cheers.

Thanks for the great insights.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the great insights right back!:-)

And isn't it interesting the way that Slytherin did seem like the House on Top for all those years and now so often seems to be associated with literal dunces? Crabbe and Goyle seem to barely scrape by and have yet to even speak in canon. Hermione thinks Pansy is dumb as a post. Yet in the first scene where we sees Draco, he says he expects to be in Slytherin as his whole family was, but says Ravenclaw would be okay, which shows, to me, that intelligence and good grades are something he respects. He seems to care about grades and insult those who don't do well academically in Potions ("Some people got D's?"). There are some people who assume that Snape is just letting Draco slide but that seems unbelieveable for Snape to me. Even if he tried to make things easier for Draco, if he's doing okay on his practice O.W.L.S. I think it's because he just knew the answers and understood the material.

So we have the house that's supposedly ambitious and has always been at the top of the school, but now seems mostly known for brute strength (which is mostly put down by the magic used by other houses)....huh? How did that happen?

[anehan]

What really puzzles me is the fact that Harry isn't referred to as a Mudblood.

I can't help but think that it's not so much about the purity of blood than about the cultural background. Above, lonicera and sistermagpie were talking about education, and about the threat the Muggle-borns could be to the WW with their allegiance to the Muggle world.

I think that someone like Harry wouldn't be considered as great a threat as Muggle-born students are, because people would suppose that he has grown up in the WW and has allegiance to it. Whether it be true or not would be irrelevant. All that matters is that people, the pureblood especially, would think that he had grown up in the WW. (Because why would any witch or wizard want to live in the Muggle world?)

Harry is practically a Muggle, that's true, but the people hardly think that way. IIRC, Ron was surprised that Harry didn't know anything about the WW. These days, they may know, intellectually, that Harry has been raised as a Muggle, but they have always believed that he's been part of the WW, and that belief cannot be changed. After all, he is the Boy Who Lived. Of course he knows everything about the WW.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I think what baffles me about the accusation of racism apologism floating around are mostly two issues, one of which you illustrated pretty thouroughly:

1) It's not a direct analogy. In terms of Nazi/Jews it could be reversed, reaching as much as the finger pointing crowd is. As a prejudice, it's been clearly rejected by society as a whole, something that's yet to happen to prejudice against black people. Hermione doesn't get any sort of backlash for being a Muggle-born. This doesn't in any way excuse the prejudice, of course, but it impairs the parallel in the fundamental point where discrimination hurts the discriminated against minority. For fans to say "Mudblood" is not the same as saying the N-word. Because Wizards don't exist.

2) The nice straw-men where brainless Draco fangirls failed to notice his racism. (This is particularly amusing because it's a topic that's been talked to death in my corner of the fandom. It seems like a lot of these rants indulge in ignoring fandom dialectic around a character in favour of its most immature sections because they are more shocking - a bit like the information you get from tabloids.) The assumption that after we're enlightened, we are going to see how wrong and short-sighted our liking of a "repulsive" character was (clearly it's perfectly logic of someone to assume their standard should be the paradigm of all).

Let's put it like this: it's muddled. I am not bothered by the statement that he is a racist, especially because that's the word I typically use to describe his brand of prejudice. This doesn't change anything: I judge him as morally repulsive, I consider him a good character, and I love him as a person. There's been insinuations lately that trying to shift the Mudblood analogy to class prejudice or prejudice against disability is a coping mechanism or another form of apologism, and to that I say: bullshit. I don't know much about class prejudice (though I know about snobism) but I deal with disable people on a daily basis and that prejudice is just as repulsive.

I was amused by someone claiming that Draco is proud of his racism. Uh, no. He's proud to be superior to Mudbloods. He doesn't think he has a prejudice, he thinks he has an informed judgment he could scientifically (right, whatever that becomes in the WW) back up. I could have found that topic more interesting if it wasn't pretending Draco readers have never tackled the subject, and it wasn't, all in all, an huge indignant claim to appeal a bandwagon. It's a bit like the "I don't get it!" argument, which isn't an argument at all. Silly rabbit, rethoric is for kids.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Arrrgh. It really is kind of funny how it's assumed that if you like the character you must not know the character when usually the folks who like the character pour over everything about him! I mean, I admit that there are fangirls who do exist, and even intelligent fans who just gladly say, "I like Fanon!Draco, non Canon!Draco," thus saying that they want to like the character by removing all the difficult things about him.

Bot both extremes are annoying and inaccurate. As someone said on F_W recently, you'd think there's no middle ground between, "OMG he's racist and teh ebil!!!" and "OMG u think the DEs are just pretty and misunderstood! Yr scary!!!"

I was amused by someone claiming that Draco is proud of his racism. Uh, no. He's proud to be superior to Mudbloods. He doesn't think he has a prejudice, he thinks he has an informed judgment he could scientifically (right, whatever that becomes in the WW) back up.

Which is funny because many people--especially many people in the HP books--are proud of their prejudices. Why else does Ron snort at Malfoy the very first day? Or Harry tell Neville he's better than any stinkin' Slytherin? Or Hagrid say there was never a dark wizard who didn't come out of there? Or Sirius continue to say Snape deserved the Prank? Or Snape say Harry is a spoiled brat just like his father? Or Arthur want to go after Lucius? Or Lucius go after Arthur? Or the twins and Ginny spit at the mention of Percy's name? Or Ernie wish he could watch Narcissa Malfoy take Draco off the trains? Or fans say other fans are scary for liking the bad guys/not liking the bad guys. EVERYONE thinks their judgments are correct and a sign of their superior nature.

There's been insinuations lately that trying to shift the Mudblood analogy to class prejudice or prejudice against disability is a coping mechanism or another form of apologism, and to that I say: bullshit.

Heh--yes, and important to be recognized bullshit because really, why should discrimination based on race be considered so much worse, other than the fact that currently it's considered a big issue? If one is going to look at why discrimination is wrong one has to look at the real issues. All to often, I think, people want to rank discrimination in order of importance when it's unnecessary, so you get people fighting for one kind of tolerance and not caring about another with the attitude of, "Well, once we get our rights then we can take the time to respect yours," when really the same arguments apply to all different groups. In fact, setting groups against each other has always been a useful tool in preventing equal rights, I think.

[ellenore.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...

I had always thought of "mudblood" as more of a class-type insult. Like "white trash" instead of "n*****".

[mizbean.livejournal.com]

I don't agree that "mudblood" would be equivalent to white trash or other class insults because people can rise above their white trash or lower-class roots -- Bill Clinton, Martha Stewert, etc. Sure they can still be mocked for their roots (Clinton being called Bubba), but those roots can made to be pretty transparent.

Being Black, Middle-eastern, etc., is a matter of your parentage, it can never be changed. Hermione will always be a mud-blood and Harry will always be a half-blood. That is why I never had a problem equating pureblood racism to white racism in America. I'm totally aware that I am projecting and that probably wasn't JKR's intent. It's probably better that is more open to interpretation anyway.

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

Hm. While I of course agree with many of your points, I've got to point out that Draco=racist and thus DE ideas are racist are not fandom interpretations but canon, because Rowling has said so in an interview:

JK Rowling:
When he (Harry) first entered the world (of Magic) he had of course expected it to (after spending time with the Dursley's) be this magical wonderland and almost immediately he wandered into Draco Malfoy in the robe shop and found out that Wizards are racist and slowly but surely he's found out that many people in power in the Wizarding World are just as corrupt and nasty as they are in our world.

And no, I do not agree calling someone a mudblood is essentially the same as calling someone (insert a bad name you use to call people of other race in RL). Mostly because I consider men and wizards as two separate species, while squibs and muggle-born wizards are equivalent to mutants. The difference between a wizard and a muggle, has NOTHING to do with culture or skin color, but ability to do magic which I don't consider a less siginificant trait than say ability to speak-- the main difference between human beings and monkeys. So I've always believed seriously treating the wizard/muggle-born issues as racism issues is really kind of silly.. Isn't the matter much better dealt-with in the X-men series? 'Freaks' who look just like you and me, speak perfect human languages, but are much much more superior in terms of natural abilities, are of a minority group who do not trust normal human beings for a good reason?

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Just to play devil's advocate:

not fandom interpretations but canon, because Rowling has said so in an interview

Rowling's interviews aren't canon.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that the whole pureblood vs. muggles is not a direct reflection of white vs. black or Nazi vs. Jew or what have you. I think it's a mixture of a great deal of things. But sometimes I do think it's necessary to point out to people that the word mudblood is intended to be a very offensive word, like n***** (and I'll respect your wishes here despite my firm belief that being afraid to write/say it in a discussion (as opposed to using it as an insult) is ridiculous). Because sometimes people need to be reminded of that. As you said, the word didn't affect Hermione because she didn't have any history with it, and often the same is true with the readers.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Feel free to use the word actually--I tend to feel the same way you do thinking there's no reason to not use the word to talk about it, I just figured I'd play it just in case. (I do feel a little silly not writing it out. I'm probably doing it for no reason.)

But yeah, it's true that the word clearly has an intended meaning in the text. What it means to the character who uses it is different than what it means to a character who's never heard it. The intention is just as important, though, and the intention is to be offensive.

Anti-Muggle sentiment is nastier

[puzzlement.livejournal.com]

[via daily_snitch]

yet in all those books we've never gotten any real idea just what any possible anti-Muggleborn sentiment is really about. It just seems to come down to Voldemort or Draco or Snape saying Mudblood.

Anti-Muggle sentiment isn't exactly the same as anti-Muggleborn, but we do see the DEs torturing Muggles for their own amusement in GoF. (They aren't inflicting physical pain as far as I know but they must be inflicting considerable terror on the family they levitate.) I don't know what came first, anti-Muggle or anti-Muggleborn attitudes, but I suspect they're related sentiments and we've seen anti-Muggle sentiment have at least one cruel manifestation.

You are absolutely right that it isn't exactly comparable to racism though. I think attitudes to Muggles have some resemblance to imperialist tendencies though: a mixture of "what funny little people, we should help them out" and "what useless little people, why do they walk this green earth with us if not to amuse us?" It's an interesting case in so far as there are clear demonstrative differences in ability between Muggles and wizards that presumably wouldn't be overcome by any kind of assimilation.

Re: Anti-Muggle sentiment is nastier

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Very true! I would assume anti-Muggle sentiment came first since it makes sense if Muggles are considered lower animals Muggleborns would be inferior (or suspicious) by association. Of course, it's also kind of interesting that Wizards do this kind of thing a lot-Snape is turned upsidedown just like the Muggles, Hagrid gives Dudley a pig's tail, the twins hex people, the Slytherins are hexed extravagantly and Draco's turned into a ferret and bounced. (Draco has that done to him by a DE, of course, but people aren't particularly horrified by it and Ron thinks it's great.)

It's an interesting case in so far as there are clear demonstrative differences in ability between Muggles and wizards that presumably wouldn't be overcome by any kind of assimilation.

Yes! I think there's lots of times where Wizard attitudes, especially towards Muggles, cleverly echo a lot of real world attitudes. It's just that there's a lot of different echoes because they've got their own history. And as you say, there's plenty of things Wizards say about Muggles that are just true--they can't do magic and that makes them different.

[samaranth.livejournal.com]

Co-incidentally, tonight I was searching the ‘Net for something or other for work, and what do you know, but one of sites I found was something like an encycopaedia entry of Harry Potter, and the Wizarding World, including schooling, politics, and – you guessed it – racism. It only had a couple of sentences, but it was very much along the lines of the debate you have highlighted.

I’d agree about the power of the insult depending on the historical and cultural context. I can’t really add anything to the things others have said. (Apart from the fact I haven’t got time to read the extra 70 or so comments which popped up overnight!)

Draco’s use of the Mudblood term indicated many things, but I didn’t discern from it, or from any other even in Books 1-4 that a systemic racism exists in the WW. At least not before OoTP, where with the Ministry playing the role it does (cf the ascendancy of the State over the individual) it is possible to see the creation of edicts/regulation, which might be based on race. Though for what purpose I couldn't say, at this point.

One thing that does bother me, and it is the result of the history of the environment I inhabit, is the use of the terms ‘pureblood’ ‘half-blood’, and so on. I read the proposed title for the next book and thought ‘Oh please, no.’ It does have strong associations with the Nazi regime of the 30s and 40s. But, in a more contemporary point of view, from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective to be described as ‘half-blood’ (or ‘half-caste’) is very offensive. It is the association with culture which identifies a person as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, not degrees of blood. And in the past discriminatory practices (essentially the denial of human rights) were based on just this question.

I know that in the WW they don’t appear to have the same response (doesn’t Sean Finnegan cheerfully describe himself as a half-blood?) So I acknowledge I’m probably being a bit too sensitive. And that, perhaps, is the same trap that those who respond to Mudblood in the same way they would to other racially pejorative words fall into.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent point--and it fits in the US as well, where Native American ancestry is quantified by blood. The term "Halfblood," I think, has historically been used to mean half-Native/half-European American. So it's true you really get into a sticky area...if everybody uses these terms, why is one that much more offensive? Obviously the "mud" part is derogatory in the way "half" isn't, but still it's based on the idea that the standard "pure" means all-wizard.

I don't much care for the title of the next book either, for a few reasons, and I think this is one of them too. I think I really would prefer not to be drawn into the blood obsession as well. I mean, as I think I said in another discussion, there's ways in which one could almost get the impression that Muggleblood is an advantage in the WW. Of the trio, Ron is the ordinary one. Draco is also ordinary. Neville, thusfar, has been below average. There are certainly plenty of competent purebloods, but the exceptional wizards, Hermone, Harry and Tom Riddle, make a point of their Muggle heritage. It could tip in the other direction, with wizards liking the cache of Muggleblood, which would still be kind of offensive.