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If we carry through on the racism/blood prejudice equivalency...
was James Potter a racist of the worst order?
Think back to the Snape's Worst Memory scene. Remember when Lily asks James just what Severus ever did to him? The reply from James was, "it's more the fact that he exists if you know what I mean. . ." Most people, IMO, interpret that to mean the bully's "natural" prey instinct had kicked in, but what if we are going to carry through on the claim that anti-Muggle and Muggleborn prejudice is equivalent to racism.
These boys were born in 1960, and it was not until 1967 that Loving v. Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Ahhh, you say, stop trying to apply American standards and baggage to Brits. So let's look at Rowling's model: Anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in Nazi Germany. They were also enforced in South Africa between 1949 and 1985. So....was Snape's existence the result of a violation of the law? How many half-bloods did we see in the Marauder era? And even if it's not illegal, was it considered shameful by a large segment of the Wizarding population? No, it wasn't by Harry's time, but mores change. Is that part of what James meant when he said it was that Severus existed? He added "if you know what I mean", which is the nod-nod, wink-wink of a racist, roughly equivalent to the loaded statements characters in Seinfeld used to make about homosexuals, always followed up with the tag line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (nod, nod, wink, wink). It's also the shrug and eye-roll that accompanies many whites' comments about Native Americans, with the apparent idea that they can imply the most outrageously racist things, and it doesn't count because they trail off towards the end. But their buddies all know what they meant, so they're covered either way.
I can almost hear the howls of outrage. ;-) You idiot, they say, he was married to LILY, the ultimate poster child for Muggle-borns. But...
How many friends did James Potter have who were not pureblood? I mean friends, as opposed to hangers-on or sycophants. We know he was married to Lily, obviously. Which means that he made an exception for his own behavior, not uncommon at all for bigots. And yes, he "befriended" Lupin the werewolf in school. But how much did he do after school, when Lupin was not a dorm-mate and, later, a prefect in a position to choose between admiring them or blowing the whistle on Sirius and him? Rowling said in her interviews post-DH that James was independently wealthy, which allowed James and Sirius not to worry about having jobs, so they could "work" for the Order full-time. Note that she does not include Lupin in James' largesse, which according to her extended to James' wife and Sirius, who just happened to be pure-blooded.
These boys were born in 1960, and it was not until 1967 that Loving v. Virginia struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the US. Ahhh, you say, stop trying to apply American standards and baggage to Brits. So let's look at Rowling's model: Anti-miscegenation laws were enforced in Nazi Germany. They were also enforced in South Africa between 1949 and 1985. So....was Snape's existence the result of a violation of the law? How many half-bloods did we see in the Marauder era? And even if it's not illegal, was it considered shameful by a large segment of the Wizarding population? No, it wasn't by Harry's time, but mores change. Is that part of what James meant when he said it was that Severus existed? He added "if you know what I mean", which is the nod-nod, wink-wink of a racist, roughly equivalent to the loaded statements characters in Seinfeld used to make about homosexuals, always followed up with the tag line: "Not that there's anything wrong with that." (nod, nod, wink, wink). It's also the shrug and eye-roll that accompanies many whites' comments about Native Americans, with the apparent idea that they can imply the most outrageously racist things, and it doesn't count because they trail off towards the end. But their buddies all know what they meant, so they're covered either way.
I can almost hear the howls of outrage. ;-) You idiot, they say, he was married to LILY, the ultimate poster child for Muggle-borns. But...
How many friends did James Potter have who were not pureblood? I mean friends, as opposed to hangers-on or sycophants. We know he was married to Lily, obviously. Which means that he made an exception for his own behavior, not uncommon at all for bigots. And yes, he "befriended" Lupin the werewolf in school. But how much did he do after school, when Lupin was not a dorm-mate and, later, a prefect in a position to choose between admiring them or blowing the whistle on Sirius and him? Rowling said in her interviews post-DH that James was independently wealthy, which allowed James and Sirius not to worry about having jobs, so they could "work" for the Order full-time. Note that she does not include Lupin in James' largesse, which according to her extended to James' wife and Sirius, who just happened to be pure-blooded.
As many have said the wizarding world wanted to get rid of Voldie, but had no interest in changing the status quo
What I find interesting about Rowling is that she uses a very old stereotype that the real evil is not from the pure-bloods but the half-bloods(tainted blood).She makes Tom Riddle a sociopath and Severus Snape untrustworthy(through most of the series). On the side of light she makes Lupin a coward, Hagrid an idiot who don't question the so-called light's agenda and how they fit into it. Dobby the only free elf kisses the ass of ole massa. Harry who revels in being ignorant. Lily who marries a racist and embraces a culture which has no place for her muggle relatives, Hermoine the same thing. All revering on some level the great white pure-blood father Dumbledore. Rowling does not even examine what type of self-loathing would go into embracing a pure-blood agenda by one who is not, a major failing, but I guess Rowling did not expect anyone to examine her text that closely.
Excellent point, but what I don't understand is how she then claims that her books are an argument for tolerance. Tolerance of what, exactly?
Rowling does not even examine what type of self-loathing would go into embracing a pure-blood agenda by one who is not,
And of course, this goes double for Snape, although I have often attributed that to the bottom line that he found acceptance from the Slytherins, and outright hatred from the supposedly enlightened ones who should have welcomed him, the poster child for tolerance of all things muggle in the early 70's. Instead, they chose to make Lily the poster child, presumably because she was attractive, female, and not mixed-blood (and thus less of a threat) and above all....Gryffindor.
Brilliant!
Re: Brilliant!
I do not think you can equate house prejudice with racism based on blood status. And I think that Rowling, et al, are taking the position that it's GOOD to be biased against Slytherin because that's where the anti-Muggleborn racists are. And that one can, in fact, choose not to be in Slytherin...just look at Harry.
The problem I have with that is that we see the *exact opposite* in Snape's story. He is welcomed by Slytherin House when he sorts there, by prefect Lucius Malfoy, no less. BTW, in Chapter 4 ("Eileen Prince's Son") of 1981, we specifically address Severus' first year in Hogwarts and a discussion he has with Lucius and Narcissa Black on just how Slytherin House treats half-bloods. Please forgive the plug. ;-)
Anyway, it is the Gryffindors, specifically Sirius Black and James Potter, who object to Severus' very *existence* and James Potter who offers the justification for what, looking back, would appear to be a racially motivated attack if we are going to follow Rowling's equation of blood prejudice with racial hatred. And yet it appears she would have us hold Slytherin responsible. Down the rabbit hole....
Not that James seems to be really "justifying" it. He seems pretty confident that he's just entitled.
And yes, he "befriended" Lupin the werewolf in school.
Which just sort of gave him the advantage of keeping Lupin from blowing the whistle on him, because if Lupin got out of line, suddenly the full moons were no longer merry romps with animal buddies but an agony of solitary suffering in the Shrieking Shack. It could be coincidence, but I can also see James using it as an excuse to do something fun like learn how to be an animagus. And there may have been some genuine stirring of human spirit in there somewhere, but then wouldn't he, as you say, have provided for Lupin instead of letting the guy live in abject poverty?
Anyway, you've raised good points to ponder. Especially the thought that Lily merely jumped from a superficial bigot who, given the right kind of mentoring, was capable of outgrowing it, into someone who was a dyed-in-the-wool bigot.
As much as I wanted to like Lily, the more I think about it, the less likeable I find her. And the idea that we should be equating blood prejudice with racism, complete with all the baggage, just ends up making me even more sympathetic to Severus. Just imagine being poor and ugly, and then facing racist attacks on your very existence (and that's just from the "good guys"). It makes his position as a student all the more precarious, and would certainly go quite some distance towards explaining (in a very unsympathetic to Hogwarts kind of way) just why the pureblood teachers like Dumbledore and McGonagall could not be bothered to intervene.
And then to have Lily excusing that behavior, all the while accusing *his* "friends" of making racist attacks on *her friends*. No wonder he was reduced to staring impotently at her.
To be fair: 21-year-olds who are murdered by dark wizards may not have had the forethought to make a will that says "and give $X/month to my high-school buddy who will have a hell of a time finding employment, should his life-threatening and contagious disease status become public knowledge."
Before Harry's 3rd year, I don't think we've got any indication that Lupin was having trouble finding employment. He wasn't wealthy, but wasn't exactly hurting, either. It's only after, when his condition becomes known, that he slides into poverty.
Other than that point, though, I agree; James was indeed a first-class bigot, an arrogant privileged jerk who expected to be at the top of the social order because he was born that way.
Of course, I'm also of the opinion that interviews aren't canon--not because "only books are canon" but because JKR obviously can't be bothered to mesh her mental image with the details she wrote in the books themselves.
Because Sirius took care for it. :)
Since JKR didn't bother to enlighten us about in her books I think this theory might be as goos as any tossed around here in the comments.
I had thought she said that James supported Lupin too, but maybe I misread it, or automatically assumed that Lupin was included when it wasn't explicitly stated. But either way, there must have some sort of falling out, or at least distancing between Lupin and the other Marauders after they left school, since Sirius so easily believed Lupin to be the traitor, and Lupin was apparently never considered for the position of secret-keeper though Sirius and Peter were.
I always wondered if it had something to do with the Shrieking Shack prank. Obviously Lupin didn't end his friendship with Sirius over it, but he must have been upset that he was used by his friend to carry out a stupid prank that would have gotten a human being killed or turned into a werewolf. Knowing how much he's suffered from his own lycanthropy, I'm sure that Lupin would have been devastated if he'd inflicted his curse on another person. And if James hadn't rescued Snape in time, that would probably have spelled Lupin's destruction as well. I don't know what the wizarding laws are regarding werewolves who attack people, but I would imagine a sentence in Azkaban at the least.
So yes, I think that Lupin would be pretty mad at Sirius, and since even years later in PoA, Sirius still isn't repentent about the prank, he might well be angry in return that Lupin is making a big deal about a mere prank--Snape didn't get hurt, after all. To him it might seem like Lupin is sticking up for Snivellus over his friends. They must have made up on the surface, but that might have driven a small wedge between Lupin and the others that gradually got wider with time. Maybe James and Sirius saw that they couldn't trust him to stand by them wholeheartedly, without reservation, and Lupin saw how little his "friends" (or at least Sirius) really valued him, if they'd risk his freedom and maybe his life to use him as a weapon against Snape in a stupid prank.
Or maybe it is just prejudice coming into play, and deep down, James and Sirius couldn't fully trust a werewolf and a half-blood (Lupin is both--a double strike against him).
Rowling made the statement about James supporting his buddy at Carnegie Hall (see http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2
This is in the reporter's summary of the event:
Jo related the fact that Remus Lupin, prior to the third book, was unemployable because he was a werewolf and upon his graduation from Hogwarts along with James and Lily, was supported by James using their own money.
However, that is not at all what she said. Rowling's actual quote follows:
Q: Harry often wondered about his parents lives before he died. What did Lily, James, Remus, Lupin and Sirius do after Hogwarts?
JKR: To take Remus first, Remus was unemployable. Poor Lupin, prior to Dumbledore taking him in, lead a really impoverished life because no one wanted to employ a werewolf. The other three were full-time members of the Order of the Phoenix. If you remember when Lily, James and co. were at school, the first war was raging. It never reached the heights that the second war reached, because the Ministry was never infiltrated to that extend but it was a very bad time, the same disappearances, the same deaths. So that's what they did, they left school. James has gold, enough to support Sirius and Lily. So I suppose they lived foff a private income. But they were full-time fighters, that's what they did, until Lily fell pregnant with Harry. So then they went into hiding.
BTW, in looking for the quote, I came across this interview: http://www.gazette-du-sorcier.com/J-K-R
So who knows what she's going to say when...
And really, I have to agree with Snape on this. James did not do it to rescue him...James did it to save his own arse, not to mention Sirius. James certainly didn't show any interest in even Remus post-Hogwarts.
Or maybe it is just prejudice coming into play, and deep down, James and Sirius couldn't fully trust a werewolf and a half-blood (Lupin is both--a double strike against him).
Either that, or James did not have to "tolerate" a half-blood werewolf anymore because the werewolf couldn't turn him in. Otherwise, if they were so rich, why couldn't James include Remus in his home as he did Sirius, who *could* have gone out and gotten a job. And, as noted above, Rowling specifically says Remus was improvished "because no one wanted to employ a werewolf". No one obviously including James and the other oh-so-pure Order members.
Just another double standard from Rowling, IMHO.
For all that Harry gets called a "halfblood"--both his parents are magical; both graduated from Hogwarts. Until book 5, I wasn't sure anyone had magical-and-Muggle parents, and Witch/Muggle pairings in fanfic always seemed a bit skewed because of that.
You idiot, James was married to Lily!
Well, there is a very obvious and rational reason why an abuser would choose a woman whose relatives are COMPLETELY, totally, genetically powerless to protect her from him....
Sort of gives a different twist to the thought that in a household that KNEW they were targeted by Lord Voldemort, the wife didn't have an emergency Portkey in the baby's nursery....
Eh?
On another topic, I just doublechecked Canon. Lupin is often (eg on Wikipedia) credited with being a member of the first OotP, but he is not in Moody's picture of "the original order".
Re: You idiot, James was married to Lily!
So *was* Lupin a member of the original order then? Didn't Dumbles send him off to get together "the old crowd", which would sort of imply that he knew who they all were. Do we have *anything* in canon that tells us where Lupin went after Hogwarts?
Re: You idiot, James was married to Lily!
- poor devils,' growled Moody. 'Better dead than what happened to them… and that's Emmeline Vance, you've met her, and that there's Lupin, obviously… Benjy Fenwick, he copped it too, we only ever found bits of him… shift aside there,' he added, poking the picture, and the little photographic people edged sideways, so that those who were partially obscured could move to the front.
Re: You idiot, James was married to Lily!
I so need a few James-and-Lily-bashing fics. I so, *so* need them.
*goes on knees and begs shamelessly*
Re: You idiot, James was married to Lily!
"Well, there is a very obvious and rational reason why an abuser would choose a woman whose relatives are COMPLETELY, totally, genetically powerless to protect her from him...."
If that doesn't say it all right there..........
Racism, power, sexuality (1/2)
Sunny playground, middle of the day, a rich White boy decides it's time (yet again) to grab the attention of a pretty (and moderately wealthy) Black girl that he has wanted to shag for a while. So he decides to show her how manly and powerful he is -- by grabbing a working-class biracial kid that grew up in her neighborhood, who just happened to be walking by, and attacking him with a White friend of his, completely out of the blue. The kid is beaten and tied up, with foaming soap water poured down his throat, by the time the pretty princess shows up at the scene... Whereupon Rich White Boy tells her his action is entirely justified because the very existence of this ugly boy in the midst of his vision is grounds enough for his righteous punishment. For some unfathomable reason, Pretty Black Girl doesn't retort in fury (indeed according to JKR she's getting slightly turned on by the whole scene) but just chastises him with "you think you're funny" and "you're just a common bully." She continues to bicker with Rich Boy while not making a single move to help the boy on the ground out of his ropes -- which would only take a flick of her wrist, seeing as she's got a knife in her pocket. Then White Boy tells Black Girl to go on a date with him if she wants him to stop hurting her biracial friend, which she refuses, and then he and his White Friend hang Biracial Boy upside down, revealing his skinny legs and graying underwear. Middle-class Black Girl suppresses a smile. She and Rich Boy bicker some more, and finally he lets Biracial Boy go, telling him it's only thanks to the prettiness of his neighborhood friend that he didn't get lynched into a bloody mess. Biracial Kid snaps back, calling White Boy out on his racial kink, and in doing so uses the N word to describe Lily. At Privileged White Boy's indignant accusation of racism, Lily rightfully says he himself is just as bad... Which at this point in time she seems to understand, yet for some reason she forgets this side of James somewhere down the line, and decides to marry Rich White Boy to live Happily Ever After in a totally White society. Oh, but not for the money, of course! Nor for her fear of more of her neighborhood friends getting lynched by the boy and his righteous gang if she refused. She just came to her senses, you see, and realized that that was the Right Thing To Do, to chose the Side of the Light over the Cult of Darkness.
Racism, power, sexuality (2/2)
Sorry for my rantish tone. It's just, it always makes me seethe when people are clueless enough to say "But James can't be racist at all. Look, he fell in love with Lily and married her!" Oh yes, and we know exactly how many rich Caucasian men marry girls from Asia, Russia, Western Europe, etc. precisely *because* they are racist and not in spite of it. (Many men, of course, intermarry without being motivated by racism. Hell, I have a racial kink of my own and wouldn't dream of castrating myself by categorically calling such desire racist by definition. I'm just saying that an ugly potential for a power component to this kink is *there*, even if most guys who revel on it likes to pretend there's no racist bone in their bodies... Pardon the pun.)
Speaking of kinks, is it just me, or does Sirius with his poster of Naughty Muggle Girls (who are helplessly immobile, unlike their wizarding counterparts) on his wall smack even more clearly of a privileged-race boy getting off on the racial power play? It also makes him seem like a hopeless case of a gay homophobe trying to channel his lust for a friend into a desire to emulate him... But if he were completely heterosexual I as a Muggle woman would never want to date him, his beautiful face be damned.
These discussions make me cringe. I'm sure that James et al. weren't meant to be racist. They were meant to be cool and a bit idiotic. That, I think, would be the authorial intent. But as soon as we move away from that and look deeper, we get drawn in and there is no end to it. And then we see how little plan and thought really is in these books. There is a lot of fantasy and fun, great ideas for an interesting world - but it's not thought through, planned out, discussed properly. "It's only a children's book series" is the saddest part of it, I think. Cringe!
James, race, and class
*Kicks self across room.*
James’s specific claim to non-racist fame is, “I would never call you a you-know-what.”
I don’t know how it is/was in Britain, but when I was growing up in America, by the late sixties, certain racial epithets were considered absolutely vulgar while racist attitudes were still considered natural and normal. Only poor white trash would use the n-word: you know, those stupid, ugly, poor, ill-educated, inbred people like the Gaunts and Carrows, whose only possible claim to consider anyone else inferior is that they at least aren’t filthy you-know-whats. My mother would have washed out my mouth with soap in 1970 if I had used the n-word, but a few years back she was totally comfortable advising my sister to remove my niece from her pre-school because her friends there—guess which color—would teach her bad habits. My mom was open and unashamed—because she takes it for granted that she IS superior, by being white and in other ways. But it’s terribly rude and vulgar to insist on it by using the cruder terms. One uses code words instead. My mother would NEVER call anyone a you-know-what.
I know from reading Dorothy Sayers that as recently as the thirties, using racist epithets did not apparently mark a character, as lower-class. And, of course, the wizarding world in general seems... conservative. So what was the situation in real Britain in the seventies, and how does that intersect with the whole Nature’s Nobility theme?
Is it, in fact, possible that the Blacks and Malfoys are overcompensating nouveaux riches? That tapestry sure doesn’t go back very far…. (And given the longer wizarding lifespan, nouveaux would be a relative term.)