Snapedom

I should mention that this post and the one I posted previously, are in response to the Snapedom June Challenge, "Severus and the Muggle World." It's only one, specific facet of Severus' relationship to the Muggle world, but obviously it's an important one to address! I really appreciate the discussion my first post has generated, even where I disagree with what people have said. Simply having the discussion at all is a good thing.

Because so many people have touched upon many of the same points in their comments, I decided to compose a single post addressing some of the most common concerns and observations. As time permits (I'm not online at home, except to read text-only via cell phone) I will reply to individual comments on other points that were raised.

Also see: ether_bunny's post and cardigrl's post which further explore prejudice in the wizarding world.

"Prejudice against Muggles and Muggleborns," "On using the term 'racism,'" and "Ethical considerations in the scene in Snape's Worst Memory" are discussed behind the cut:



Prejudice against Muggles and Muggleborns

The prejudice against Muggle-born witches and wizards is rooted in prejudice against Muggles, and both come under persecution by Voldemort and his followers, so I don't think it's accurate to say it's specifically "anti-Muggleborn" prejudice. Voldemort and Company target Muggles as well as Muggleborns; they hate anything that isn't one hundred percent wizard.

This of course, begs the question of how the hell half-bloods fit into this whole scheme. One would think they would be considered "impure" by virtue of having Muggle blood, and so equally targeted for elimination, yet that is not the case.

It appears the half-bloods get to choose sides: As long as they can claim one wizarding parent, and as long as they align themselves with the wizarding parent and reject allegiance to the non-wizarding parent, they have "purified" themselves in the eyes of Voldemort and the blood-purity crowd. Sort of a twisted version of confession and absolution, as it were: Repent of your Muggle ancestry, and you shall be pure as the driven snow. It requires having a wizarding ancestry that remains after the non-wizarding ancestry has been thus purged--which might actually explain why the "purification" of those with no wizarding ancestry (and it only seems to go back one generation, this analysis) means eliminating them, because they have no wizarding ancestry to survive said "purification."

(As a side note, is anyone else disturbed by the fact that a series that supposedly is all about the message that Blood Lineage Is Not What Really Matters In A Person ends by proclaiming Harry the Last Living Descendant of the Peverells and thus the Rightful Heir to the Hallows? What WAS the point of that whole side plot, anyway--other than to give Harry a super-powerful invisibility cloak, a super-powerful wand allegiance by which to defeat Voldy, and a super-powerful stone that could bring back his parents and their friends in time to escort him on his Death March?)


On using the term "racism"


What I'm raising for debate is how we use and apply the term "racism" in discussion about the wizarding world and its prejudices, not whether any parallels can be drawn between anti-Muggleborn prejudice and real-world racial prejudice. Of course parallels can be drawn, and yes, it's clear that anti-Muggleborn prejudice was meant to be a metaphor for real-world racial prejudice. But that does not mean that anti-Muggleborn prejudice and our real-world experiences of racial prejudice are one and the same thing. They have different historical roots, different cultural contexts, different rationales and assumptions and ideologies underlying them. They are analogous, not identical.

Someone remarked that substituting "prejudice" for "racism" seemed to be "too tame" to apply to anti-Muggleborn prejudice. That was exactly my point: to suggest we use a less volatile, more "tame" term that doesn't automatically elicit strong personal associations when discussing, for example, the rights and wrongs of the Snape's Worst Memory scene.

What happens, otherwise, is that we begin conflating our own cultural and personal experiences of racism (e.g., black and white in America), and beliefs about racism and the moral weight that should be given to it in conflicting interests--all of which are rooted in a huge tangle of historical and ideological associations--with the wizarding world's prejudices against Muggles and Muggleborns. And pretty soon, we are talking about our own situations, not what's happening in the books. Analogies and interpretive filters are not necessarily bad, but we do need to consciously recognize them for what they are, employ them intentionally, and keep aware of the boundaries between the filters and that which we are filtering through them.

This is NOT to say that racism, itself, should be "tamed" or minimized in importance; on the other hand, neither should other forms of prejudice be "tamed" or minimized in importance. While we do need to see the parallels in terms of specific real-world experiences of racism, we also need to be able to back away from those specifics--and all the strong and volatile emotions through which we filter any discussion based on them--and view the broader picture of prejudice in this scene and in the books.

Prejudice is bad. ALL forms of prejudice are bad. I do not believe in making a "pissing contest" between various groups targeted for oppression. In applying only the narrow term "racism" in discussion of anti-Muggleborn prejudice, we risk focusing on one rationale for prejudice and thus failing to see the broader problem of prejudice in ALL of its manifestations, whether based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or the social construction of any of the above.

This, I submit, is the major flaw underlying JKR's moral universe: In writing a parable about racism, she turned a blind eye to sexism, classism, appearance-ism (I know there's a word for it, somewhere), and so forth. If the books were meant to be a celebration of diversity, they failed on several important counts.


Ethical considerations in the scene in Snape's Worst Memory


Was Lily wrong? Was Severus wrong?

Both of them were wrong.

Lily felt threatened by Severus' allegiances, but Severus also felt threatened by Lily's allegiances. We are so used to seeing Gryffindor and the Order through the filter of Being The Good Side that we need to remind ourselves that they were not always good, especially if one happened to be a Slytherin.

Severus was being ABUSED. TORTURED, for crying out loud. Severus broke. And Severus later tried to make amends, only to be kicked while he was down. It is just amazing to me that so many people cannot or will not see that this matters in the moral calculus. And it is a perfect example of why we need to stop viewing this scene solely through the filter of "racism" and all the connotations and baggage that holds for each of us: The prejudice against Severus, based on class, appearance, House affiliation, and so on, exhibited in this scene is just as morally and ethically objectionable as the prejudice against Lily based on her circumstances of birth.

I refuse to blame the young man for breaking under torture.

No, it doesn't make it right to use the term "Mudblood," and it doesn't make it right to aspire to a career among the people who practice violent, genocidal bigotry against the Muggle-born. But neither is it "right," strictly speaking, when a real-life victim of torture says or does something unethical. We don't--or at least I should HOPE we don't--say, oh, you horrible bastard, how could you say or do such a horrible thing? We DO take into consideration the context, the extenuating circumstances, and the fact that every human being has a breaking point.

Both were wrong. Both were wronged.

One thing we need to be clear about, and this is a point that only recently has struck me: Severus referred to Lily as a "Mudblood," but he did not, as is commonly interpreted, address the insult to her. He spoke the word about Lily, but it was James he was addressing.

Consider the implications of that. He did not intend, even under the breaking-point of torture, to hurt Lily herself--though it's easy for us, standing outside of the situation, to see that obviously it would and did hurt her. He was lashing out at James, trying to offend James, and trying to reassert his "manhood," as it were, in retort to a humiliating taunt that he (especially given his presumably sex-traditional working-class background) would perceive as undermining it.

What we are seeing, in the breakdown of the friendship between Lily and Severus, is a typical real-world dynamic of setting members of differing oppressed groups against each other--especially when they threaten the existing order by starting to form allegiances across group lines.

If Severus was so godawful, why would Lily have remained friends with Severus for so long, till the end of fifth year? Surely his friendships with people harboring anti-Muggleborn prejudice were known to her long before fifth year. Perhaps she saw and empathized with the fact that he was targeted for bullying because of his "oddballness" in terms of appearance, economics, social presentation, and House affiliation, and so she (like Severus) filtered out the things about him she did not want to see, such as where his questionable friendships would lead him, until she could no longer deny seeing them.

And why would Severus have remained friends with Lily if he were so thoroughgoingly steeped in anti-Muggle prejudice? Partly, no doubt, because of the place she held in his heart as his first friend, but perhaps also because at some subconscious level he was questioning the very blood prejudice his mother had instilled in him and his housemates expected him to pay allegiance to. The very fact that he apologized showed that he had not fully internalized the belief that Muggleborns were "Mudbloods." He had used the word as a weapon against his enemy, and ended up injuring his friend, who could not or would not believe that he did not really mean it.

In an ideal world, this conflict between Severus and Lily could have been a crisis that opened the way to real moral growth for both of them, bringing out into the open the question of whether Severus really believed that Muggleborns were worse than purebloods; if he thought he did believe that, then why did he still care so much about Lily? It could have been the opportunity for Severus to bring up the practical realities of what Lily apparently expected of him: If he were to spurn his friendships in Slytherin, to whom could he turn? Where would he find support? Would he be putting himself in danger by taking a stand against his housemates and against the organization to which they aspired?

The wizarding world, however, was not an ideal world. People on both sides of the divide would have objections to such a friendship. In Snape's Worst Memory, we see James take advantage of that social tension (consciously or subconsciously) to play Lily and Severus against each other.

• Severus is caught unawares by James and Sirius, targeted for bullying and subjected to physical and psychological torment. Severus retaliates against his abuser, and is subjected to further torment.
  
  
• Lily comes up and does not attempt to intervene magically--which may reflect her conflict of loyalties: Like Remus Lupin, she may know what is right but doesn't quite have the required dose of Gryffindor CourageTM to act on it. Or maybe it just doesn't occur to her to directly challenge James by countering his spells against Severus. Or maybe she is afraid, based on what she knows of him: He does, after all, end up threatening to "hex" her when she finally does pull out her wand--and projecting the "blame" for being hexed by him onto her. But she does come to Severus' defense verbally, taking his side as much as she dares.
  
  
• James banters with her, patronizes her, teases her, threatens her, then relents, but not without futher denigrating Severus, making his very rescue from torture cause for humiliation instead of relief. Even in relenting, James Potter still comes out "Alpha," on top.
  
  
• THIS is the point at which Severus breaks, snapping, "I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!" Not because he truly regards Lily that way, but because he knows that the words will not only offend James, as a Righteous GryffindorTM, but because James "fancies" Lily and so an insult against Lily is a way to injure James. Of course Severus doesn't articulate any of this rationally; it's the lashing-out of a wounded animal, as it were, a scream against his own pain.
  
  
• And this is James' moment of triumph. Lily grows cold, insults Severus with the derogatory nickname that James used (and had created?) for him, and then mocks his present vulnerability and his economic-class status by commenting on his embarrassingly old and graying underwear. Lily also insults James, then leaves, and James has succeeded in what has surely been his long ambition: to create a rift between Lily and Severus. He has not, however, succeeded in getting Lily to go out with him, and so his immediate reaction, besides confusion, is anger.
  
  
• James takes out his rage at Lily's snubbing of him by tormenting Severus some more, presumably to the continued amusement of their fellow students.
  
  
• Severus later repents and tries to reconcile with Lily, but she refuses to accept his apology, fires questions and judgments at him, often without waiting for him to answer, or cutting him off when he stammeringly attempts to answer, and ends the friendship, then and there.

If we want to apply real-world concepts of prejudice to the wizarding world, then let us see this scenario (and the five-year history leading up to it) for what it really is: divide and conquer. One reason oppression continues in the real world is because the various oppressed groups are set against each other. To see Lily alone as right and Severus alone as wrong is to miss the bigger picture of multiple bigotries that interweave and permeate the social and relational dynamics at Hogwarts and in the larger wizarding world--and in our own. Racism, sexism, classism, status-ism, affluence-ism, beauty-ism: It's all connected. None is better, or worse, than another. None should be set against another. Tug at one string in the web of life, and everything begins to unravel.