![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Slytherin House is, of course, the bastion of “those whose blood is purest”… right? Only purebloods need apply, and if anyone else ever sorted there by accident (like those notorious alumni Tommy and Sevvie) they keep their secret “dirty” heritage a, well, secret. Right?
Well, maybe in Salazar’s day. But now? Not only does the house necessarily contain non-purebloods—it’s entirely possible that purebloods may even not be in the majority any more.
At least according to what JKR has told us, and a very little basic math.
Part I: Are (Almost) All Slytherins Purebloods?
Consider: JKR apparently said in interviews that purebloods make up about a quarter of the Hogwarts students (and magical population), Muggleborns another quarter, and people of mixed ancestry the rest. Mind, the text actually suggests that the number of “true” purebloods may be a much smaller minority than that—c.f. Ron in CoS explaining to Hermione that Draco’s pureblood supremacist views make no sense because hardly anyone is actually “pure” any more, and Hermione’s observation in GoF that Voldemort’s supporters (all several dozen of them, as it transpires) could not be comprised exclusively of purebloods because there aren’t enough of them. But we’ll take that figure of 25% as a theoretical maximum and see what happens.
(See, by the way, Jodel’s essay “The Rise of the Mudbloods” for a very in-depth discussion of wizard population dynamics. I’m just looking at the ramifications for one house, Slytherin; Madam RedHen looked at wizard society in general. http://www.redhen-publications.com/Mudb
Hogwarts is divided into four houses. Either each contains approximately one-fourth of the student population, or some houses must contain markedly more or fewer students than the others. Yet we have no evidence at all for the latter being the case. No house table in the great hall is noted as being sparsely occupied or overcrowded, nor are we told that the core subjects’ class size varies wildly according to which house our POV Gryffindors share a particular class with. So let’s provisionally assume the houses are approximately equal in size.
So, in Harry’s class there are supposedly about 40 students, about 10 in each house, 28 of whom are named or described. And supposedly about one-fourth of them should be purebloods. Let’s say a normal range of 8-12 (10 +/- 20%).
But Neville, Ron, Ernie, and a Ravenclaw girl, Morag MacDougall, are stated to be purebloods. That leaves 4-8 purebloods to fill Slytherin House’s ten slots. So already Slytherin cannot be pureblood-only.
But it gets worse. Seven non-Slytherin students in Harry’s year are identified as half-bloods, three (only!) as Muggleborns (two if one excludes Dean Thomas), and seven others as either pure or mixed (Wizarding relatives are mentioned, and/or we know that they attend Hogwarts under the D.E. occupation). If even a third of those not-sures are purebloods, that leaves us 2-6 purebloods left to be in Slytherin. If half of the not-sures are, that leaves us 0-4.
It is, in fact, entirely possible that Draco, Millicent, and Vincent (whose surnames we find on the Black Family Tree) are the only pureblood Slytherins in their year. It’s even possible—remotely—that Draco is the only Slytherin pureblood; he is, after all, the only one we know for certain. Canon doesn’t contradict that reading, and statistics allow it.
Nor does the problem go away when we look at other years. We know that house affiliation often runs in families. So the Lovegoods may have been sorting to Ravenclaw for a while, the Prewetts scurrying along with the Longbottoms, Potters and Weasleys into Gryffindor, the Diggorys proud Hufflepuffs of long standing—see where this is heading? We know of all these pureblood families sending their children to houses other than Slytherin. But any pureblood not in Slytherin means a space in Slytherin that must be filled by a non-pureblood, if the house is to be kept in balance with the rest of Hogwarts.
In fact, look at the fifteen families whose blood was pure enough to mix with Blacks according what’s been published of the Black Family Tree. Compare those names to known students in the last two generations (Harry’s and his father’s). We find six names attached to Slytherins: Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Rosier, Lestrange, and Malfoy. We find three Gryffindor families, a probable Gryffindor, & a Hufflepuff: Longbottom, Potter, Weasley, Prewett, and MacMillan. We have three with no students identified in the last two generations: Yaxley, Gamp and Burke. And we have one whose house affiliation was never stated: Crouch.
(Do it the other way and look at members of the original OotP known to be purebloods: Gideon & Fabian, Frank & Alice, James & Sirius. If we assume that all Purebloods not STATED to have sorted elsewhere were Slytherins, we’d have at least four Slytherins [besides Severus, who’s undercover] in the original Order. Shouldn’t Hagrid have mentioned that to Harry? Alternatively, if we hold to the impression that Order members were mostly Gryffs, and consider that the Prewetts’ nephews and Longbottoms’ son are Gryffs, we’d have at least 6 Gryff Purebloods in the generation before this one.)
Just on names, we have for this sample (the Blacks’ marital connections) at BEST 73% of pureblood families tending to sort to Slytherin; at worst, it may be as low as 46%. So either Slytherin House is becoming smaller and smaller, or it contains between, say, 27% to 54% Half-bloods and Muggleborns.
If you look at the Black family’s possible pureblood relatives and marital connections only in the most recent generation, Harry’s, it looks even worse: we know of one each Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, and Malfoy in Slytherin (four), versus seven Weasleys, a Longbottom, and a MacMillan (nine in other houses).
So if Slytherin House makes up even close to a quarter of the Hogwarts population, and if purebloods do make up a quarter of the Wizarding population, purebloods are probably either already a minority or in imminent danger of slipping into a minority in their “own” house.
Just for grins, let’s try the numbers to see how much smaller Slytherin house would be by now if it were accepting only purebloods and the vanishingly rare exceptionally talented half-blood (say, one per generation or two… Tom Riddle, Severus Snape). Let’s take the 46-73% range for purebloods choosing to sort into Slytherin, and further assume that the other three houses (not being prejudiced about who they accept) are roughly equal. If 3/4 of purebloods sort to Slytherin (and in effect almost no one else does or can), Slytherin house would gain about 18% of incoming students, with the remaining 82% being roughly evenly dispersed among the other three houses (about 27% each). In Harry’s class (of 40), that would be about 7 Slytherins, with about 11children in each other house.
In other words, if just one-quarter of purebloods sorted to other houses and Slytherin accepted (almost) no one else, Slytherin would have about two-thirds the students of other houses.
If it’s more like 54% of purebloods who choose other houses, that would leave Slytherin with about 11-12% of total students, and each other house at close to 30%. In other words, each of the other houses would now outnumber Slytherin by very nearly 3:1.
And Slytherin House still managed to win the Quidditch and House Cups for years, until Harry arrived to throw things off? Now THAT is a tribute to the power of ambition! And to Harry’s powers of obliviousness (okay, Harry’s obtuseness at least IS canon) —Slytherin house holds only one-third to two-thirds of the students in Gryffindor, and Harry never once notices, if only to think spitefully, “Well, it makes sense that no one would ever sort there if they could go elsewhere!”
But I think it’s more reasonable to assume that Slytherin House, whatever Salazar’s stated preferences, has for a while now been accepting ambitious mixed-bloods and Muggleborns without all that much of a fuss.
*
Part II: Possible Changes in Attitudes to Blood “Superiority” Over Time
Please note that Draco Pureblood Malfoy never once used the opprobrious epithet ‘Mudblood’ of Hermione (or anyone) until after SHE had mortally insulted HIM by asserting that Malfoy could never have made his house’s Quidditch team without cheating. (Maybe Hermione had been channeling Trelawney in this scene—and how Hermione would have hated that!—and projected forward to HBP, when only cheating—hers—could get someone on the team. In my grade school, we used to sing to someone who’d accused another of transgressing schoolyard codes, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you say is what you are.”)
Before Draco entered Hogwarts, he had an encounter with a kid dressed in Muggle cast-offs—and he tried, repeatedly, to strike up a conversation with him. Only after the presumed Muggle-born had rudely snubbed his every conversational overture did Draco start asking about Harry’s family and pontificating about how Hogwarts shouldn’t let “the other sort” in. (Thanks, duj, for having pointed this out.)
IOW: Draco didn’t start with Pureblood supremacist rantings the moment he met his first (if illusory) Muggle-born. He turned to that after being snubbed by the supposed Muggle-born, perhaps to protect himself from being hurt by Harry’s rejection, perhaps to hit back.
And he didn’t talk about blood purity; he talked about the outsiders “not knowing our ways.”—which Harry had, in fact, just been demonstrating.
At the beginning of CoS when Lucius criticized Draco’s grades, Draco protested “the teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger—”
It’s his father who pointed out that Hermione was “a girl of no wizard family” who nonetheless beat Draco “in every exam.” (Um—every exam? So that would include Potions? Then Snape did grade fairly on his finals, as some of us had otherwise surmised? And, er, no one else, apparently, beat Draco’s exam scores? Oh, how he must have hated Hermione--not for her blood status, but as his only serious academic rival. And notice that neither father nor son, speaking privately, attached opprobrious epithets to the despiséd Hermione.)
And Mr. Borgin, listening in, inserted (greasily, per JKR), “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere—”
Let’s get this straight, because subtle differences matter. The “stooping” Mr. Borgin (who may therefore have been older, of an earlier pureblood generation) implied strongly that “wizard blood” ought to “count” to get Draco the better grade, regardless of whether Draco’s performance had actually merited it.
Lucius Malfoy, in contrast, argued explicitly that his pureblood son ought to be able to EARN a higher grade than “a girl of no wizard family.”
And Draco protested (unconvincingly, in my view) that Muggle-born Hermione’s higher grade was earned by being a teacher’s pet, and thus (implicitly) that truly fair grading would have put Draco first.
Let’s review Draco’s logic. A scion of the Slytherin pureblood filthy-wealthy elite finds it plausible (in 1992) to assert that he’s the put-upon victim of unfair grading at Hogwarts? That Dumbledore’s teachers (including Snape?) would unjustly grade a Muggle-born Gryffindor higher than a rich pureblood Slytherin?
Oh, my.
Not that I accept Draco’s excuse, but that Draco could offer that argument to his father and expect to be believed casts a FASCINATING light on the Hogwarts subculture.
*
Part III: Is “Blood Purity,” in itself, the Only/Primary Source of Status in Slytherin House?
Clearly, being ‘well-born’ (pure) is a POSSIBLE source of status in Slytherin house, as in the WW in general. But the only one? Or even necessarily the overriding one? As a source of status, after all, it’s competing with wealth, fame, connections to the political power elite, raw magical talent, intelligence, even beauty… with NONE of which is it directly correlated by now.
We saw that Draco combined pure birth, wealth, connection to the power elite, intelligence, magical power, and a creative talent for adolescent mocking humor. We know that at least some of the other Slytherins in his year followed his lead. But we also know that when his family lost status, he lost influence: Slughorn shunned him as a DE’s son in HBP, Crabbe ended up rejecting him in DH as a failed DE’s son/ DE. His purity of blood hadn’t changed, but his (changing) family status apparently trumped that. On both (on all?) sides.
And remember that canon showed us that Draco pulled the “Mudblood” card on Hermione only after she had both bested him academically and viciously insulted him.
It’s quite possible that only those who came up short in every other possible arena would automatically totally privilege pureblood birth over all other considerations (*cough* Marvolo Gaunt).
On the other hand, there’s the underlying blood prejudice that Slughorn so innocently expressed to Harry, that surely, people of magical birth MUST (in general) be more adept at magic. But though Sluggy thought Lily’s and Hermione’s brilliance unusual, he was not at all surprised by half-blood Harry’s proficiency in Potions. More to the point, Sluggy specifically and repeatedly attributed Harry’s talent to LILY’s blood running in Harry’s veins, not to the thousand-year-pure Potter blood with which Lily’s was mixed. So Slughorn, at least, seems to think that ANY magical inheritance is sufficient to account for magical greatness; he doesn’t think that “purity” is necessary. (Note this was also Hagrid’s view—he told Harry that of course Harry would be a thumpin’ great wizard, with the parents he had. Hagrid did NOT say that of course Harry would be great as the last scion of the Potters, despite his father’s unfortunate misalliance.) So the prejudice in the general population seems to be more that it’s astonishing that magical brilliance could emerge out of nothing, not (among any but the loony fringe like Walburga and Marvolo), that purity of blood is required for magical power.
And indeed, in areas of Muggle mastery we Muggles generally think the same. We’re more astonished if an Olympic athlete is the child of dedicated couch-potatoes than a trained-from-birth scion of top athletes; and at my (top-ranked, private, expensive) college there were far fewer first-generation scholars than children of the professionally-educated classes. And, um, we first-generationers felt ourselves at a bit of a disadvantage compared to those for whom higher education was an obvious birthright….
Moreover, Sluggy at least allowed that the rule, magical birth is a prerequisite for magical greatness, could be disproved in any specific case. A given Muggleborn, such as Lily or Hermione or Dirk Cresswell, could win personal acceptance without necessarily dislodging the overall belief.
What’s the saying?
“A Muggleborn has to do something twice as well as a pureblood in order to be thought half as good.
Fortunately, that’s not difficult.”
But that you had to be “pure” to win acclaim…. there’s no more evidence (that I know of) that that’s true in general in Slytherin, than that it’s true in the WW in general. That is, there is evidence that (some) people value blood purity, and that some (mostly losers) value it highly. But the most-honored person in Wizarding Britain when we readers entered it was Dumbledore the Half-blood. Who had been contested by (and defeated) Riddle the secret Half-blood, that promoter of Pureblood supremacy.
*
Part IV: Mortal Insults versus Insults between Friends
Blood status was not the only type of “superiority” that we saw deployed against enemies, but not against (supposed) friends and allies.
Note how the indisputably-wealthy Malfoys and Blacks used their superior economic status to insult their less well-off enemies. Lucius insulted Arthur for his poverty; his son regularly taunted Ron and the other Weasleys about being poor, starting from the moment Draco identified the strange redhead on the Hogwarts Express as an enemy Weasley. In PoA Draco jeered at Lupin, whom he didn’t like, for shabby robes. And Draco called Hagrid (excuse me, Professor Hagrid—though he wasn’t then) a servant, disparagingly.
Yet Severus Snape lived in a Muggle slum, in a moldering tiny house with shabby furnishings—and Narcissa Malfoys knew exactly where to find him, so his domicile (and what it revealed about Snape’s background) had presumably not been a secret from the Malfoys. Though Bellatrix denigrated his home, Narcissa did not—nor did we ever see Lucius or Draco do so, even when Draco was fighting with Snape in HBP. Nor do we have any reason to think that Vincent or Gregory’s families commanded anything like the Malfoy fortune, yet we never saw Draco attempt to hold their comparative poverty against them.
Similarly, we never saw Sirius Black hold Remus’s poverty against him. But Black did call Severus Lucius’s lapdog, insinuating (among other things) that Snape was a hanger-on rather than a true friend of the wealthy Malfoys.
It seems that economic disadvantage can be used as a weapon—and that such weapons are to be used against enemies, not against allies or friends.
So is blood status the same in the WW? Something a “superior” MIGHT use (as one might use superior economic status) to taunt an enemy, but that one would never invoke against an ally/friend?
Bellatrix clearly disparaged both Snape’s economic status and his genetic heritage when she characterized his home as being situated in “a Muggle dung heap.” Yet Narcissa, equally bred of the Blacks and married to the Malfoy millions, didn’t encourage Bella’s criticism.
And which of the women, again, was visiting Severus to ask him for a favor?
Yet not even Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Voldemort’s right hand (she wished!), criticized Snape’s half-blood birth or relative poverty to his face, though we know she inherited her aunt Walpurga’s mania on the subject of blood purity. Instead, she focused on his supposed failures to achieve their Lord’s ends.
There are insults one doesn’t voice, at least not aloud to one’s allies’ faces.
Bellatrix and Severus were, after all, allies in devoted service to one Lord.
*
Part V: Is the House of Ambition Currently the “Best” House?
A few other unsupported misconceptions about Slytherins and/or purebloods—are Slytherins in general, purebloods in general, or specifically Slytherin purebloods all (or mostly) members of a politically powerful and fabulously wealthy elite?
Well. Pureblood families described in canon as rich include the Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges (all Slytherin) and the Potters (Gryffindor). The Crouches (house unknown) certainly had not been hurting for money, and Hufflepuff’s heiress Smith had been fabulously wealthy back in the forties. Zacharias is said to be a half-blood, so if he’s her relative the family, like the Potter family, is no longer entirely “pure.” The Gaunts emphatically were not wealthy, nor are the current Weasleys or the Lovegoods. The Longbottoms don’t seem to be, though their reluctance to spend money on top-quality gear for Neville may reflect their opinion of the near-Squib more than their financial standing. Slytherin Blaise Zabini’s mother is wealthy through her deceased husbands—none of whose blood status is known, nor is her own or her son’s. Nor, in fact, is the former Mrs. Zabini’s house, nor the houses of any of her husbands.
Do we have canon evidence for the financial status of any other pureblood family now, or for any other Slytherin of whatever blood status?
Well, Slytherins Tom and Severus entered Hogwarts penniless. And who, after all, is more likely to be ambitious, someone born with a silver spoon in hir mouth or someone who has to scrabble for everything?
There’s no direct evidence for anyone else (that I recall). But… remember Draco’s second year, when Lucius bought the entire Slytherin Quidditch team Nimbus 2001 brooms to celebrate his son’s making the team (or, per Hermione, to bribe the team to accept his son)? That gesture makes no sense unless most of the team had previously, like the Weasley twins, been riding inferior brooms. If all or most of the team already had their own top-of-the-line brooms, new ones should make little difference. (And, per the Weasley twins, who spied on the Slytherins’ practice, the brooms did make a difference.)
Ergo, most students on the Slytherin Quidditch team could not afford new top-of-the-line brooms every year, or, perhaps, at all. So Slytherins are definitely not uniformly, and probably not even mostly, fabulously rich; the Malfoys are exceptional. (And note that the Blacks and Lestranges have apparently died out, and the Potter and Black fortunes have both passed to a half-blood….)
So then, are Slytherins unduly influential in politics and society? Currently? (Mind you, I imagine that the perception—which as I have previously pointed out, may be entirely incorrect—that most of You-Know-Who’s supporters were Slytherins may have severely damaged the house’s standing over the past twenty years or so.)
Well, ask Horace Slughorn; I’m sure his judgment is more to be trusted on such a matter than mine. He’s spent a long lifetime honing such observations, yes?
We never saw the exact composition of the current Slug Club. But we did see the first round of invitations (based mostly on family connections, before Horace got to know the current batch of students). On the Hogwarts Express Slughorn’s invitations were extended to one Slytherin (Blaise), one Ravenclaw (Belby), and four Gryffindors—Harry, Neville, Cormac, and Ginny. (Note too, Terri adds nastily, that there was only one girl of the six, and she an afterthought. Grr!) We know that Sluggy dropped Belby, Neville, and apparently Ginny, and added Hermione. It’s apparent from this guest list that—to put it mildly—Slughorn doesn’t consider his house to be unduly influential. And, er, which house seems to be? (And, BTW, the two known Purebloods both evaporate.)
In fact, ask the well-researched Hermione Granger. On her first Hogwarts Express ride, she gave an absolutely Slytherin reason for wanting to be Sorted into one house over another: “I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in [X], it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it….”
*
All of this would certainly throw some light—or darkness—on the appeal Voldemort’s stated objectives might have had to some of the WW’s pureblood supremacists. That faction, by the time Tom started to whisper in its horrified, fascinated ears, was in decline. They were bleeding to death, and they knew it, however vehemently they might have denied the truth.
With every passing year they were losing numbers, power, financial standing, and prestige.
And the result of some of those Pureblood scions desperately throwing in their lot in behind Lord Voldemort (who proved, oddly enough, to be a Halfblood) was probably to accelerate that slow decline to a swift broom-ride to destruction.
Ain’t karma grand when one gets to see it work?
Well, maybe in Salazar’s day. But now? Not only does the house necessarily contain non-purebloods—it’s entirely possible that purebloods may even not be in the majority any more.
At least according to what JKR has told us, and a very little basic math.
Part I: Are (Almost) All Slytherins Purebloods?
Consider: JKR apparently said in interviews that purebloods make up about a quarter of the Hogwarts students (and magical population), Muggleborns another quarter, and people of mixed ancestry the rest. Mind, the text actually suggests that the number of “true” purebloods may be a much smaller minority than that—c.f. Ron in CoS explaining to Hermione that Draco’s pureblood supremacist views make no sense because hardly anyone is actually “pure” any more, and Hermione’s observation in GoF that Voldemort’s supporters (all several dozen of them, as it transpires) could not be comprised exclusively of purebloods because there aren’t enough of them. But we’ll take that figure of 25% as a theoretical maximum and see what happens.
(See, by the way, Jodel’s essay “The Rise of the Mudbloods” for a very in-depth discussion of wizard population dynamics. I’m just looking at the ramifications for one house, Slytherin; Madam RedHen looked at wizard society in general. http://www.redhen-publications.com/Mudb
Hogwarts is divided into four houses. Either each contains approximately one-fourth of the student population, or some houses must contain markedly more or fewer students than the others. Yet we have no evidence at all for the latter being the case. No house table in the great hall is noted as being sparsely occupied or overcrowded, nor are we told that the core subjects’ class size varies wildly according to which house our POV Gryffindors share a particular class with. So let’s provisionally assume the houses are approximately equal in size.
So, in Harry’s class there are supposedly about 40 students, about 10 in each house, 28 of whom are named or described. And supposedly about one-fourth of them should be purebloods. Let’s say a normal range of 8-12 (10 +/- 20%).
But Neville, Ron, Ernie, and a Ravenclaw girl, Morag MacDougall, are stated to be purebloods. That leaves 4-8 purebloods to fill Slytherin House’s ten slots. So already Slytherin cannot be pureblood-only.
But it gets worse. Seven non-Slytherin students in Harry’s year are identified as half-bloods, three (only!) as Muggleborns (two if one excludes Dean Thomas), and seven others as either pure or mixed (Wizarding relatives are mentioned, and/or we know that they attend Hogwarts under the D.E. occupation). If even a third of those not-sures are purebloods, that leaves us 2-6 purebloods left to be in Slytherin. If half of the not-sures are, that leaves us 0-4.
It is, in fact, entirely possible that Draco, Millicent, and Vincent (whose surnames we find on the Black Family Tree) are the only pureblood Slytherins in their year. It’s even possible—remotely—that Draco is the only Slytherin pureblood; he is, after all, the only one we know for certain. Canon doesn’t contradict that reading, and statistics allow it.
Nor does the problem go away when we look at other years. We know that house affiliation often runs in families. So the Lovegoods may have been sorting to Ravenclaw for a while, the Prewetts scurrying along with the Longbottoms, Potters and Weasleys into Gryffindor, the Diggorys proud Hufflepuffs of long standing—see where this is heading? We know of all these pureblood families sending their children to houses other than Slytherin. But any pureblood not in Slytherin means a space in Slytherin that must be filled by a non-pureblood, if the house is to be kept in balance with the rest of Hogwarts.
In fact, look at the fifteen families whose blood was pure enough to mix with Blacks according what’s been published of the Black Family Tree. Compare those names to known students in the last two generations (Harry’s and his father’s). We find six names attached to Slytherins: Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Rosier, Lestrange, and Malfoy. We find three Gryffindor families, a probable Gryffindor, & a Hufflepuff: Longbottom, Potter, Weasley, Prewett, and MacMillan. We have three with no students identified in the last two generations: Yaxley, Gamp and Burke. And we have one whose house affiliation was never stated: Crouch.
(Do it the other way and look at members of the original OotP known to be purebloods: Gideon & Fabian, Frank & Alice, James & Sirius. If we assume that all Purebloods not STATED to have sorted elsewhere were Slytherins, we’d have at least four Slytherins [besides Severus, who’s undercover] in the original Order. Shouldn’t Hagrid have mentioned that to Harry? Alternatively, if we hold to the impression that Order members were mostly Gryffs, and consider that the Prewetts’ nephews and Longbottoms’ son are Gryffs, we’d have at least 6 Gryff Purebloods in the generation before this one.)
Just on names, we have for this sample (the Blacks’ marital connections) at BEST 73% of pureblood families tending to sort to Slytherin; at worst, it may be as low as 46%. So either Slytherin House is becoming smaller and smaller, or it contains between, say, 27% to 54% Half-bloods and Muggleborns.
If you look at the Black family’s possible pureblood relatives and marital connections only in the most recent generation, Harry’s, it looks even worse: we know of one each Flint, Bulstrode, Crabbe, and Malfoy in Slytherin (four), versus seven Weasleys, a Longbottom, and a MacMillan (nine in other houses).
So if Slytherin House makes up even close to a quarter of the Hogwarts population, and if purebloods do make up a quarter of the Wizarding population, purebloods are probably either already a minority or in imminent danger of slipping into a minority in their “own” house.
Just for grins, let’s try the numbers to see how much smaller Slytherin house would be by now if it were accepting only purebloods and the vanishingly rare exceptionally talented half-blood (say, one per generation or two… Tom Riddle, Severus Snape). Let’s take the 46-73% range for purebloods choosing to sort into Slytherin, and further assume that the other three houses (not being prejudiced about who they accept) are roughly equal. If 3/4 of purebloods sort to Slytherin (and in effect almost no one else does or can), Slytherin house would gain about 18% of incoming students, with the remaining 82% being roughly evenly dispersed among the other three houses (about 27% each). In Harry’s class (of 40), that would be about 7 Slytherins, with about 11children in each other house.
In other words, if just one-quarter of purebloods sorted to other houses and Slytherin accepted (almost) no one else, Slytherin would have about two-thirds the students of other houses.
If it’s more like 54% of purebloods who choose other houses, that would leave Slytherin with about 11-12% of total students, and each other house at close to 30%. In other words, each of the other houses would now outnumber Slytherin by very nearly 3:1.
And Slytherin House still managed to win the Quidditch and House Cups for years, until Harry arrived to throw things off? Now THAT is a tribute to the power of ambition! And to Harry’s powers of obliviousness (okay, Harry’s obtuseness at least IS canon) —Slytherin house holds only one-third to two-thirds of the students in Gryffindor, and Harry never once notices, if only to think spitefully, “Well, it makes sense that no one would ever sort there if they could go elsewhere!”
But I think it’s more reasonable to assume that Slytherin House, whatever Salazar’s stated preferences, has for a while now been accepting ambitious mixed-bloods and Muggleborns without all that much of a fuss.
*
Part II: Possible Changes in Attitudes to Blood “Superiority” Over Time
Please note that Draco Pureblood Malfoy never once used the opprobrious epithet ‘Mudblood’ of Hermione (or anyone) until after SHE had mortally insulted HIM by asserting that Malfoy could never have made his house’s Quidditch team without cheating. (Maybe Hermione had been channeling Trelawney in this scene—and how Hermione would have hated that!—and projected forward to HBP, when only cheating—hers—could get someone on the team. In my grade school, we used to sing to someone who’d accused another of transgressing schoolyard codes, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, what you say is what you are.”)
Before Draco entered Hogwarts, he had an encounter with a kid dressed in Muggle cast-offs—and he tried, repeatedly, to strike up a conversation with him. Only after the presumed Muggle-born had rudely snubbed his every conversational overture did Draco start asking about Harry’s family and pontificating about how Hogwarts shouldn’t let “the other sort” in. (Thanks, duj, for having pointed this out.)
IOW: Draco didn’t start with Pureblood supremacist rantings the moment he met his first (if illusory) Muggle-born. He turned to that after being snubbed by the supposed Muggle-born, perhaps to protect himself from being hurt by Harry’s rejection, perhaps to hit back.
And he didn’t talk about blood purity; he talked about the outsiders “not knowing our ways.”—which Harry had, in fact, just been demonstrating.
At the beginning of CoS when Lucius criticized Draco’s grades, Draco protested “the teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger—”
It’s his father who pointed out that Hermione was “a girl of no wizard family” who nonetheless beat Draco “in every exam.” (Um—every exam? So that would include Potions? Then Snape did grade fairly on his finals, as some of us had otherwise surmised? And, er, no one else, apparently, beat Draco’s exam scores? Oh, how he must have hated Hermione--not for her blood status, but as his only serious academic rival. And notice that neither father nor son, speaking privately, attached opprobrious epithets to the despiséd Hermione.)
And Mr. Borgin, listening in, inserted (greasily, per JKR), “It’s the same all over. Wizard blood is counting for less everywhere—”
Let’s get this straight, because subtle differences matter. The “stooping” Mr. Borgin (who may therefore have been older, of an earlier pureblood generation) implied strongly that “wizard blood” ought to “count” to get Draco the better grade, regardless of whether Draco’s performance had actually merited it.
Lucius Malfoy, in contrast, argued explicitly that his pureblood son ought to be able to EARN a higher grade than “a girl of no wizard family.”
And Draco protested (unconvincingly, in my view) that Muggle-born Hermione’s higher grade was earned by being a teacher’s pet, and thus (implicitly) that truly fair grading would have put Draco first.
Let’s review Draco’s logic. A scion of the Slytherin pureblood filthy-wealthy elite finds it plausible (in 1992) to assert that he’s the put-upon victim of unfair grading at Hogwarts? That Dumbledore’s teachers (including Snape?) would unjustly grade a Muggle-born Gryffindor higher than a rich pureblood Slytherin?
Oh, my.
Not that I accept Draco’s excuse, but that Draco could offer that argument to his father and expect to be believed casts a FASCINATING light on the Hogwarts subculture.
*
Part III: Is “Blood Purity,” in itself, the Only/Primary Source of Status in Slytherin House?
Clearly, being ‘well-born’ (pure) is a POSSIBLE source of status in Slytherin house, as in the WW in general. But the only one? Or even necessarily the overriding one? As a source of status, after all, it’s competing with wealth, fame, connections to the political power elite, raw magical talent, intelligence, even beauty… with NONE of which is it directly correlated by now.
We saw that Draco combined pure birth, wealth, connection to the power elite, intelligence, magical power, and a creative talent for adolescent mocking humor. We know that at least some of the other Slytherins in his year followed his lead. But we also know that when his family lost status, he lost influence: Slughorn shunned him as a DE’s son in HBP, Crabbe ended up rejecting him in DH as a failed DE’s son/ DE. His purity of blood hadn’t changed, but his (changing) family status apparently trumped that. On both (on all?) sides.
And remember that canon showed us that Draco pulled the “Mudblood” card on Hermione only after she had both bested him academically and viciously insulted him.
It’s quite possible that only those who came up short in every other possible arena would automatically totally privilege pureblood birth over all other considerations (*cough* Marvolo Gaunt).
On the other hand, there’s the underlying blood prejudice that Slughorn so innocently expressed to Harry, that surely, people of magical birth MUST (in general) be more adept at magic. But though Sluggy thought Lily’s and Hermione’s brilliance unusual, he was not at all surprised by half-blood Harry’s proficiency in Potions. More to the point, Sluggy specifically and repeatedly attributed Harry’s talent to LILY’s blood running in Harry’s veins, not to the thousand-year-pure Potter blood with which Lily’s was mixed. So Slughorn, at least, seems to think that ANY magical inheritance is sufficient to account for magical greatness; he doesn’t think that “purity” is necessary. (Note this was also Hagrid’s view—he told Harry that of course Harry would be a thumpin’ great wizard, with the parents he had. Hagrid did NOT say that of course Harry would be great as the last scion of the Potters, despite his father’s unfortunate misalliance.) So the prejudice in the general population seems to be more that it’s astonishing that magical brilliance could emerge out of nothing, not (among any but the loony fringe like Walburga and Marvolo), that purity of blood is required for magical power.
And indeed, in areas of Muggle mastery we Muggles generally think the same. We’re more astonished if an Olympic athlete is the child of dedicated couch-potatoes than a trained-from-birth scion of top athletes; and at my (top-ranked, private, expensive) college there were far fewer first-generation scholars than children of the professionally-educated classes. And, um, we first-generationers felt ourselves at a bit of a disadvantage compared to those for whom higher education was an obvious birthright….
Moreover, Sluggy at least allowed that the rule, magical birth is a prerequisite for magical greatness, could be disproved in any specific case. A given Muggleborn, such as Lily or Hermione or Dirk Cresswell, could win personal acceptance without necessarily dislodging the overall belief.
What’s the saying?
“A Muggleborn has to do something twice as well as a pureblood in order to be thought half as good.
Fortunately, that’s not difficult.”
But that you had to be “pure” to win acclaim…. there’s no more evidence (that I know of) that that’s true in general in Slytherin, than that it’s true in the WW in general. That is, there is evidence that (some) people value blood purity, and that some (mostly losers) value it highly. But the most-honored person in Wizarding Britain when we readers entered it was Dumbledore the Half-blood. Who had been contested by (and defeated) Riddle the secret Half-blood, that promoter of Pureblood supremacy.
*
Part IV: Mortal Insults versus Insults between Friends
Blood status was not the only type of “superiority” that we saw deployed against enemies, but not against (supposed) friends and allies.
Note how the indisputably-wealthy Malfoys and Blacks used their superior economic status to insult their less well-off enemies. Lucius insulted Arthur for his poverty; his son regularly taunted Ron and the other Weasleys about being poor, starting from the moment Draco identified the strange redhead on the Hogwarts Express as an enemy Weasley. In PoA Draco jeered at Lupin, whom he didn’t like, for shabby robes. And Draco called Hagrid (excuse me, Professor Hagrid—though he wasn’t then) a servant, disparagingly.
Yet Severus Snape lived in a Muggle slum, in a moldering tiny house with shabby furnishings—and Narcissa Malfoys knew exactly where to find him, so his domicile (and what it revealed about Snape’s background) had presumably not been a secret from the Malfoys. Though Bellatrix denigrated his home, Narcissa did not—nor did we ever see Lucius or Draco do so, even when Draco was fighting with Snape in HBP. Nor do we have any reason to think that Vincent or Gregory’s families commanded anything like the Malfoy fortune, yet we never saw Draco attempt to hold their comparative poverty against them.
Similarly, we never saw Sirius Black hold Remus’s poverty against him. But Black did call Severus Lucius’s lapdog, insinuating (among other things) that Snape was a hanger-on rather than a true friend of the wealthy Malfoys.
It seems that economic disadvantage can be used as a weapon—and that such weapons are to be used against enemies, not against allies or friends.
So is blood status the same in the WW? Something a “superior” MIGHT use (as one might use superior economic status) to taunt an enemy, but that one would never invoke against an ally/friend?
Bellatrix clearly disparaged both Snape’s economic status and his genetic heritage when she characterized his home as being situated in “a Muggle dung heap.” Yet Narcissa, equally bred of the Blacks and married to the Malfoy millions, didn’t encourage Bella’s criticism.
And which of the women, again, was visiting Severus to ask him for a favor?
Yet not even Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Voldemort’s right hand (she wished!), criticized Snape’s half-blood birth or relative poverty to his face, though we know she inherited her aunt Walpurga’s mania on the subject of blood purity. Instead, she focused on his supposed failures to achieve their Lord’s ends.
There are insults one doesn’t voice, at least not aloud to one’s allies’ faces.
Bellatrix and Severus were, after all, allies in devoted service to one Lord.
*
Part V: Is the House of Ambition Currently the “Best” House?
A few other unsupported misconceptions about Slytherins and/or purebloods—are Slytherins in general, purebloods in general, or specifically Slytherin purebloods all (or mostly) members of a politically powerful and fabulously wealthy elite?
Well. Pureblood families described in canon as rich include the Malfoys, Blacks, Lestranges (all Slytherin) and the Potters (Gryffindor). The Crouches (house unknown) certainly had not been hurting for money, and Hufflepuff’s heiress Smith had been fabulously wealthy back in the forties. Zacharias is said to be a half-blood, so if he’s her relative the family, like the Potter family, is no longer entirely “pure.” The Gaunts emphatically were not wealthy, nor are the current Weasleys or the Lovegoods. The Longbottoms don’t seem to be, though their reluctance to spend money on top-quality gear for Neville may reflect their opinion of the near-Squib more than their financial standing. Slytherin Blaise Zabini’s mother is wealthy through her deceased husbands—none of whose blood status is known, nor is her own or her son’s. Nor, in fact, is the former Mrs. Zabini’s house, nor the houses of any of her husbands.
Do we have canon evidence for the financial status of any other pureblood family now, or for any other Slytherin of whatever blood status?
Well, Slytherins Tom and Severus entered Hogwarts penniless. And who, after all, is more likely to be ambitious, someone born with a silver spoon in hir mouth or someone who has to scrabble for everything?
There’s no direct evidence for anyone else (that I recall). But… remember Draco’s second year, when Lucius bought the entire Slytherin Quidditch team Nimbus 2001 brooms to celebrate his son’s making the team (or, per Hermione, to bribe the team to accept his son)? That gesture makes no sense unless most of the team had previously, like the Weasley twins, been riding inferior brooms. If all or most of the team already had their own top-of-the-line brooms, new ones should make little difference. (And, per the Weasley twins, who spied on the Slytherins’ practice, the brooms did make a difference.)
Ergo, most students on the Slytherin Quidditch team could not afford new top-of-the-line brooms every year, or, perhaps, at all. So Slytherins are definitely not uniformly, and probably not even mostly, fabulously rich; the Malfoys are exceptional. (And note that the Blacks and Lestranges have apparently died out, and the Potter and Black fortunes have both passed to a half-blood….)
So then, are Slytherins unduly influential in politics and society? Currently? (Mind you, I imagine that the perception—which as I have previously pointed out, may be entirely incorrect—that most of You-Know-Who’s supporters were Slytherins may have severely damaged the house’s standing over the past twenty years or so.)
Well, ask Horace Slughorn; I’m sure his judgment is more to be trusted on such a matter than mine. He’s spent a long lifetime honing such observations, yes?
We never saw the exact composition of the current Slug Club. But we did see the first round of invitations (based mostly on family connections, before Horace got to know the current batch of students). On the Hogwarts Express Slughorn’s invitations were extended to one Slytherin (Blaise), one Ravenclaw (Belby), and four Gryffindors—Harry, Neville, Cormac, and Ginny. (Note too, Terri adds nastily, that there was only one girl of the six, and she an afterthought. Grr!) We know that Sluggy dropped Belby, Neville, and apparently Ginny, and added Hermione. It’s apparent from this guest list that—to put it mildly—Slughorn doesn’t consider his house to be unduly influential. And, er, which house seems to be? (And, BTW, the two known Purebloods both evaporate.)
In fact, ask the well-researched Hermione Granger. On her first Hogwarts Express ride, she gave an absolutely Slytherin reason for wanting to be Sorted into one house over another: “I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in [X], it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it….”
*
All of this would certainly throw some light—or darkness—on the appeal Voldemort’s stated objectives might have had to some of the WW’s pureblood supremacists. That faction, by the time Tom started to whisper in its horrified, fascinated ears, was in decline. They were bleeding to death, and they knew it, however vehemently they might have denied the truth.
With every passing year they were losing numbers, power, financial standing, and prestige.
And the result of some of those Pureblood scions desperately throwing in their lot in behind Lord Voldemort (who proved, oddly enough, to be a Halfblood) was probably to accelerate that slow decline to a swift broom-ride to destruction.
Ain’t karma grand when one gets to see it work?
Now, the half-blood/pure-blood dynamic may indeed be fairly parallel to racism. But still, as was pointed out above, it doesn't quite fit. The descendants of half-bloods intermarrying over generations will eventually be considered pure-bloods. *Race* just doesn't work that way.
Similarly, the descendants of Muggle-borns become half-bloods within just one generation.
Furthermore, race and racism have historically worked "that way". The Nuremberg Laws were based on this very same kind of principal (that blood taint only counted so far back and once it was far enough behind you in ancestry, it didn't count and you could be declared Aryan).
"The laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood". (wiki page on Nuremberg Laws)
This is similar enough to the pure-blood/half-blood/Muggle-born paradigm, that I don't think it's worth splitting hairs. For example, the Muggle-borns weren't Muggles, but they were seen as such by some due to their "Muggle blood". Racism does works that way. Why is there resistance to calling it as such (especially if it's just as bad as those other -isms)?
JKR wasn't using the books to say anything about prejudice (or the real world at all); she tried to use the inclusion of prejudice to make her books seem more interesting/profound.
JKR made the parallel from blood purism to racial prejudice on purpose and I believe the issue was important to her. That it was so very close to the Nazi's version of racial prejudice was chilling to her (because I think she thought she was making her blood purity racism pretty Fantastic but it ended up being very close to a real life example, and that's pretty darn creepy).
quote from JKR's website FAQ:
"The expressions 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' have been coined by people to whom these distinctions matter, and express their originators' prejudices. As far as somebody like Lucius Malfoy is concerned, for instance, a Muggle-born is as 'bad' as a Muggle. Therefore Harry would be considered only 'half' wizard, because of his mother's grandparents.
If you think this is far-fetched, look at some of the real charts the Nazis used to show what constituted 'Aryan' or 'Jewish' blood. I saw one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised the 'pure-blood', 'half-blood' and 'Muggle-born' definitions, and was chilled to see that the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters. A single Jewish grandparent 'polluted' the blood, according to their propaganda."
Here's one of the charts she was talking about, btw.
One final point: Racism isn't rational. The blood distinctions in wizard society are ridiculous, toxic, vile, (and can be deadly) nonsense. The reason it doesn't make sense that wizards have divided themselves up into "races" based on blood is because it doesn't make sense. That's kind of the point. Racists aren't being rational.
Could be. But my sense of this is that we're starting with the position that your posts ended with: It's horrible, whatever kind of prejudice it is, but now let's see if we can come up with the most accurate analogy for this kind of prejudice, so we can get a better sense of how it actually might have worked in the WW.
I mean... debating whether prejudice is bad or not, and nothing else? The answer is obvious, and so the debate isn't very interesting.
Furthermore, race and racism have historically worked "that way". The Nuremberg Laws were based on this very same kind of principal (that blood taint only counted so far back and once it was far enough behind you in ancestry, it didn't count and you could be declared Aryan).
Er, no, that's *not* quite the same. By those rules, if *everyone* in the family was Jewish, "Jewishness" didn't decrease over time. It was only by intermarriage with non-Jews that "Jewishness" decreased. :-P
Being Muggleborn, OTOH, is a single-generation thing, no matter what. Being half-blood could last for only one or two generations. A Muggleborn or half-blood NEVER has to marry a pure-blood in order for their descendants to become a pure-blood after 1-3 generations, and *that's* one thing that makes this unlike racism. (And utterly unlike the Nuremberg Laws.)
As I said in the previous post, I'm a fourth-generation American. I can't imagine anyone suggesting to me that I'm an immigrant. But all of my great-grandparents were immigrants. Even though all of them were immigrant families that intermarried each other, rather than into families that have been Americans longer, I'm not thought of as an immigrant. (Although since all of them were Jewish, by the Nuremberg Laws, I would still be considered Jewish.)
Now, I could imagine someone really snobby telling me that if I didn't have an ancestor arrive on the Mayflower, or something similar, I'm not really *quite* as American as *they* are. Which may be the kind of attitude that the Malfoys have.
Of course, even if prejudice against immigrants is a better analogy than racism, the blood-prejudice is more extreme that immigrant prejudice usually is (I sincerely hope). But that's a matter of degree, not a matter of kind. (cont. in next post...)
Lynn
That has to do with the location where you were born, though, not a trait you were born with or without. Prejudice against immigrants is not necessarily the same as racism (although in real life there is a lot of overlap). The example you give about the Mayflower is definitely snobbery, and might involve prejudice, but it's about the goodness of your pedigree rather than your essential human-being-ness.
[Being fourth-generation American] has to do with the location where you were born, though, not a trait you were born with or without.
Well, with Muggleborns, half-bloods, and pure-bloods, it isn't about a trait they were born with or without, either. It's about how long a line of ancestry they have in the wizarding world, as opposed to the Muggle world.
(Nor is citizenship strictly a matter of location of birth, since many countries have laws where the child of a citizen is/can choose to be a citizen, too, regardless of where the child is born. But I digress.)
The prejudice against Muggles is a different case; I was just talking about prejudice against Muggleborns, specifically. In the case of Muggleborns, it seems to me that there's an element of immigrant-like prejudice, with a foundation of virulent ableist prejudices against the Muggleborns' native *Muggle* culture.
There's something I feel the need to point out, not to you in particular, but because sometimes our society singles out racism as worse than other prejudices: racism isn't the only prejudice where people deny the fact of other people's human-being-ness. It's easier for people to do when the group is entirely "other," but even in prejudices like sexism, where everyone is *related* to a member of the prejudiced-against group, extreme bigots deny the humanity of other people.
Lynn
Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
As I (and other) have pointed out, one important difference is that being Muggleborn or half-blood is something that fades with time, even without any intermarriage with pure-bloods! That has important social ramifications, because it means that this society can't develop a group of permanent half-bloods. Muggleborns and half-bloods will keep entering the society, but their descendants will keep becoming part of the pure-blood portion of society. It also means that no cooperation from pure-bloods willing to marry half-bloods is necessary, so no matter how universally snobby pure-bloods might be, the descendents of half-bloods will still stop being half-bloods.
And that affects a lot of things, including group identity. If you know your children will be pure-bloods, you're less likely to agitate for change. After all, it isn't a problem that your loved ones will face forever, and if you try to tackle the problem, you'll only draw attention to the fact that your children are *recent* pure-bloods.
Although if we look at immigration in the US today, we see that immigrants *do* become politically active on the behalf of immigrants, even though their grandchildren won't face these issues. Part of that has to do with illegal immigration, which doesn't have an analogy in the WW. And part of it is because immigrants are a high enough percentage of the population to have developed a group identity.
Which suggests (bringing things back to Terri's post!) that Muggleborns probably *aren't* 25% of the whole British WW's population. First- and second-generation immigrants aren't 25% of the US population, but there are still enough of them to band together against anti-immigrant policies, so if Muggleborns were 25% of the WW, you'd expect a similar banding together. Since we don't see that banding together, that suggests that either Muggleborns constitute much less than 25% of the population, or there's something else keeping them from banding together.
Or perhaps, these days, Muggleborns make up 25% of the *children*, but this hasn't been going on for long enough for Muggleborns to have much of a political presence in the WW. And if we want to accept that 25% (although it isn't stated in the books themselves), then perhaps some bigots are sensing the direction of demographic change, and are reacting to the potential consequences of the society.
Surely all of this matters?
In any case, I at least am not interested in arguing over whether or not this prejudice is bad, because I know that it is. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, although technically I can't speak for anyone but myself.
Lynn
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get across (the particular type(s) of prejudice). I think it's important to recognize blood prejudice for the racist prejudice that it is, so as to understand how all it's implications in the wizarding world work.
Er, no, that's *not* quite the same. By those rules, if *everyone* in the family was Jewish, "Jewishness" didn't decrease over time. It was only by intermarriage with non-Jews that "Jewishness" decreased. :-P
If someone comes up with a slightly new/different take on being racist, that doesn't make it any less racist just because it wasn't 100% exactly like how racism was previously expressed before. The racism in HP is expressed slightly differently than the racism of the real life Nazi's, but that doesn't make it any less racist and it's splitting hairs to say "but it wasn't exactly the same so it's not racism." Whatever the fine exact details, blood prejudice is based on blood. "Blood quality" is based on heredity. That the heredity of how a person's blood becomes "pure" or "more pure" is slightly different in the world of HP than in the real world (due to the fictional factors of wizardom), doesn't make it any less based on heredity/any less racist.
Also, I'm not saying that blood prejudice doesn't also often come with a dose of xenophobia (anti-immigrantism). Racism and xenophobia are very much connected in real life (in certain areas, for certain types of immigrants) and the connection works for the wizard world as well. Immigrants can often be seen as a different race (or flat out fit a society's definition of a particular race). The Muggle-borns aren't just like any immigrants; they are like racial minority immigrants.
Let's look at two examples of xenophobia, one without racism attached and one with racism attached:
Example 1 - xenophobia w/o racism - Viktor Krum: If Viktor Krum immigrates to wizarding Britain from wizarding Bulgaria; he's still a pure-blood or half-blood. Let's assume he's pure-blood, just to simple things up. Krum may face xenophobic prejudice for being an immigrant (for having come from a different culture), but he would not face racial prejudice based on his blood purity.
Example 2 - xenophobia with racism - Hermione Granger: Hermione immigrates to wizarding Britain from Muggle Britain. She's a Muggle-born. Hermione will face prejudice for being an immigrant to the wizarding world (for having come from a different culture), and will also face racial prejudice based on her blood purity (for being a Muggle-born and having “dirty blood”).
Hermione and other Muggle-borns get a double whammy. They get xenophobia for the culture issues and racial prejudice for the blood issues. Half-bloods (unless they are half-n-half [have one Muggle parent] and are raised in the Muggle community) only suffer from racism. Half-n-half type half-bloods may suffer from both xenophobia and racial prejudice, depending on their particular circumstances. However, it is the racial prejudice that is the focus of scorn in the form of blood prejudice. Every slur we hear hurled at Muggle-borns or half-bloods refers to their blood, not their culture. Mudblood, filthy little Mudblood, child of filth (which works for any wizard with a Muggle parent), filthy half-blood’s tongue, etc. None of it refers to culture. It all refers to blood. That’s what makes it primarily racist as opposed to primarily xenophobic or just xenophobic. Racism is what blood prejudice is really about, and any xenophobia suffered by Muggle-borns (or half-n-half type half-bloods) is in addition to that.
(cont.)
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Harry immigrates to wizarding Britain from Muggle Britain. He's technically a half-blood (or a nominal half-blood), but he was raised like a Muggle-born for most of his life. Some would consider Harry to be a filthy half-blood just because he’s any type of half-blood and hold prejudice against him (i.e. Bellatrix Black), some would consider Harry to be a half-blood because of their definition of blood purity and think they are better than him but not think he's really filthy like a Muggle-born would be filthy (i.e. Draco Malfoy), and some would think Harry is nominally a half-blood on a technicality of how blood purity is perceived and wouldn’t make any value judgments based on blood purity, anyway (i.e. Arthur Weasley). If xenophobia (anti-immigrationism) were really at the root of blood prejudice, then Harry should receive scorn like Hermione does by the blood prejudiced, for they were both raised like Muggles and by Muggles (in a different culture than wizard culture) for most of their lives.* However, that is not the case. Only Hermione is called Mudblood, not Harry. Blood prejudice is about the blood, not about the culture. That’s why it’s racist (with a xenophobic rider, in some cases) as opposed to [just] xenophobic.
* Since xenophobia folds neatly into racism by definition of being “a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself”), we could say that blood prejudice is both xenophobic and racist, and I wouldn’t argue that. I just want the racist aspect acknowledged.
As I (and other) have pointed out, one important difference is that being Muggleborn or half-blood is something that fades with time, even without any intermarriage with pure-bloods!...[*]…It also means that no cooperation from pure-bloods willing to marry half-bloods is necessary, so no matter how universally snobby pure-bloods might be, the descendents of half-bloods will still stop being half-bloods.
Again, the fact that racism due to blood prejudice in the wizarding world has a slightly different twist to it than some of the real world examples of racism we've been discussing, doesn't make the blood prejudice in HP any less racist. Recognizing blood prejudice as racist doesn't prevent anyone from discussing how it particularly worked in the wizarding world of HP nor does it prevent anyone from comparing and contrasting the two different types of racism.
Yeah, the fact that half-bloods and Muggle-borns don't need to marry pure-bloods is different from how Jews would need to marry Aryans so as to "purify" their family line. That doesn't make the blood prejudice any less racist for having that difference, it's just a difference in how that particular brand of racism works (but it still works in a racist way). Blood prejudice in the wizard world still works very similarly to how it did in Nazi Germany…so much so that I think it's more appropriate to say, "blood prejudice is real-world-style racism with a new twist" as opposed to "blood prejudice isn't racism".
(cont.)
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Actually, if half-bloods and Muggle-borns keep entering society, then there will always be some half-bloods and Muggle-borns, so the fact that there is a half-blood and Muggle-born segment of society will remain and it is a permanent part of society (so long as half-boods and Muggle-borns keep entering society). The individual players will change (and that’s going to happen anyway, due to people dying and being born), but the fact that there are half-bloods and Muggle-borns will remain.
Certainly, it is easier to aspire to “purify” one’s line in the wizarding world, since half-bloods and Muggle-borns don’t need to intermarry with pure-bloods and can figure that their descendents will at least be wizards (aside from any worries of giving birth to Squibs).
Blood purists are worried about pure-bloods dying out and not being a permanent part of society, though. Hence, the most extremist factions want to eliminate Muggle-borns and Muggles, because they “taint the blood” too much. Less extreme blood purists want to at least keep their own lines pure.
And that affects a lot of things, including group identity. If you know your children will be pure-bloods, you're less likely to agitate for change. After all, it isn't a problem that your loved ones will face forever, and if you try to tackle the problem, you'll only draw attention to the fact that your children are *recent* pure-bloods.
This I agree with and it is a good point and works just as well (if not even better) if you recognize blood prejudice in terms of racism. In fact, denying the racism inherent in blood prejudice does this point no favors. That effect on group identity is not that different than someone of mixed race who can “pass” and has married a person of the majority race or another mixed race person who can “pass” and figures that racism isn’t their problem, because it won’t effect their family forever as long as they don’t bring attention to the fact that their offspring have recent racial purity taint. It also works with the xenophobic (anit-immigrantism) parallel. I can understand wanting to include both parallels of xenophobia and racism for the fullest exploration of the issue, but what I fail to understand is the insistence in denying latter.
Which suggests (bringing things back to Terri's post!) that Muggleborns probably *aren't* 25% of the whole British WW's population. First- and second-generation immigrants aren't 25% of the US population, but there are still enough of them to band together against anti-immigrant policies, so if Muggleborns were 25% of the WW, you'd expect a similar banding together. Since we don't see that banding together, that suggests that either Muggleborns constitute much less than 25% of the population, or there's something else keeping them from banding together.
*rereads terri’s essay* Terri seems to be arguing that Muggle-borns make up a higher percentage of Slytherin than they are given credit for (a point I disagree with, but that is beside the issue we are currently discussing).
Anyway, I would agree that complacency for blood prejudice is a factor in why there doesn’t appear to be more anti-blood prejudice activism in the wizarding world. I would also add that 25% is still a very well outnumbered minority group, and even minority groups that actually comprise over 50% of a population can be kept down by institutional racism (or any institutional prejudice/bigotry) due in part to issues of complacency.
(cont.)
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Surely all of this matters?
Yes, it matters, and calling it out as racism only increases the emphasis on how much it matters. It doesn’t detract from these points to recognize blood prejudice as racism (it only adds to the depth of exploration), nor does it have to lessen the impact of the xenophobic (anti-immigrant) aspect.
I’d say the blood prejudiced bigots are definitely feeling like they don’t have all the privilege they once garnered from being pure-bloods and are in danger of losing even more privilege. This maps even better if one recognizes the racial aspect, because it points to how the pure-bloods are seeing any loss of blood privilege (think “Aryan privilege” when I say “blood privilege”) as a loss of something that should rightfully be theirs by birth. It adds another layer to their bigoted sense of entitlement to recognize the racism inherent in their blood prejudice.
In any case, I at least am not interested in arguing over whether or not this prejudice is bad, because I know that it is. I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, although technically I can't speak for anyone but myself.
I’m not saying that anyone here is saying that racism isn’t bad or any other kind of prejudice isn’t bad. I actually tend to think that everyone here knows that prejudice is a very bad thing. I would be very surprised if they didn’t.
I find myself wondering why there is a resistance to labeling blood prejudice racism when it has blood right in the title and blood is a feature tied directly to and only to heritage, though. Blood purity can only be obtained by heritage. If you aren’t born with what is considered “pure-blood” you can’t get it. You can try to pass for a pure-blood, in that case, but that’s it. Furthermore, if you want to pass as a pure-blood you are going to have to lie about the blood you have inherited. Regardless of any xenophobic aspect of blood prejudice (and there is some overlap), it is also racist prejudice by definition due to the fact that blood is solely obtained by inheritance. A person can usually choose whether they immigrate or not, but you can’t choose your blood. You’re stuck with it. No matter where a pure-blood, half-blood, or Muggle-born goes, they have the blood that they have, for better or for worse. That adds another important level to blood prejudice and it doesn’t negate the xenophobic (anti-immigration) aspect.
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Yes, I thought I had acknowledged that fact. But the families involved will change, and that does affect things, as I discussed.
This I agree with and it is a good point and works just as well (if not even better) if you recognize blood prejudice in terms of racism. In fact, denying the racism inherent in blood prejudice does this point no favors. That effect on group identity is not that different than someone of mixed race who can “pass” and has married a person of the majority race or another mixed race person who can “pass” and figures that racism isn’t their problem, because it won’t effect their family forever as long as they don’t bring attention to the fact that their offspring have recent racial purity taint.
Except that in the WW, one's descendants eventually being able to "pass" is nearly *inevitable*, regardless of who marries whom. It isn't remotely inevitable with race. That inevitability amplifies the effects.
I would also add that 25% is still a very well outnumbered minority group, and even minority groups that actually comprise over 50% of a population can be kept down by institutional racism (or any institutional prejudice/bigotry) due in part to issues of complacency.
Quite true, although in a series of books where this prejudice is an important theme, you'd expect that if there were *any* organized political organization, we'd see it. Or hear it mentioned, at least. Heck, the house elves get a one-woman political organization, and they don't even want one! (grin)
Lynn
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
As I pointed out elsewhere in the thread, citizenship doesn't disappear just because you're born overseas. Now, in a case like Harry's, the isolation from the culture he's a citizen of was extreme, and we *would* expect people to treat him oddly.
But Harry is extremely well known as a descendant of "citizens," not to mention a celebrity. People generally give him special treatment; we see this repeatedly. I mean, at the beginning of PoA, when he's staying in Diagon Alley for a few weeks, he keeps getting free ice cream from Florean Fortescue, who he doesn't even know.
So, I really don't think we can consider his case typical of *anything*.
Lynn
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
This speaks to my point as well as yours, actually. Harry is a a descendant of "citizens" (he has the blood of citizens), and that is a big part of why he is treated differently than Hermione, and it is also where xenophobia and racism intersect with regards to blood prejudice.
However, it is because of blood that Harry isn't called a Mudblood and that bit speaks to the racism inherent in blood prejudice trumping any mere xenophobia attached to Muggle upbringing. When a foreign raised person is excepted only because they were born of "citizens", regardless of having the foreign country's culture, then racism has entwined itself over the issue of immigration based xenophobia. (And the two can be pretty entwined to begin with).
Also, that Harry is a celebrity and is given special treatment for that reason as well, doesn't negate the racism inherent in the way Hermione is labeled Mudblood while Harry is not labeled Mudblood.
So, I really don't think we can consider his case typical of *anything*.
I never said Harry was typical. He's not. That's why he made a good demonstration of how blood prejudice is more about blood (race) than culture (immigration)...because usually the racism and xenophobia are more interwoven for a person raised completely as a Muggle (because that person is usually a Muggle-born). Harry is quite unique.
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
This line of reasoning makes sense if you're arguing against someone who says "antisemitism isn't racism, because Jews aren't a race." In most modern antisemitism, at least, Jews *have* been treated as a race, and so the fact that it's a religion is less important when considering antisemitism.
There are key differences between the usual concept of "race" and religion, since non-Jews can convert to Judaism, and Jews can convert to another religion. Race doesn't work *that* way! But since antisemites ignore things like conversion (at least sometimes, anyway; the Nazis did), it makes sense to call antisemitism racism. In that case, your reasoning makes perfect sense.
However, the reason why antisemitism makes sense as racism is because the Nazis, for example, treated Jewishness exactly like a race, not allowing Jews to convert to another "race." The fictional blood-prejudice does *not* function exactly like race.
It doesn't function like a religion, where people can convert, so that would be a really bad analogy. ;) But it does function a little like immigration, as I described above.
One difference between immigration and the fictional case is that in immigration, immigrants usually come from different parts of the world during different periods, so that a country might get used to the earlier group generally, but dislike the new group. That is one place where this analogy doesn't fit perfectly. The Muggleborn "immigrants" seem like a consistent group, although with the Muggle and wizarding cultures changing in different ways, that may not be entirely true. In any case, assimilation would take place over the generations, so I don't think that this difference means that this analogy doesn't work.
"Blood quality" is based on heredity. That the heredity of how a person's blood becomes "pure" or "more pure" is slightly different in the world of HP than in the real world (due to the fictional factors of wizardom), doesn't make it any less based on heredity/any less racist.
It doesn't make it any less bigoted. It doesn't make it any less based on heredity.
But I'm still not convinced that you can call this race. I mean, for it to be racism, it needs to be bigotry based on something analogous to race. Otherwise, it's bigotry based on something unlike race, and while it's just as bad either way, it isn't racism. Q.E.D., yes?
You seem to be reducing "anything that involves heredity" to race. But that's a huge generalization, and as I've shown, the heredity with blood "impurity" functions socially in a completely different way than the way that heredity and race function socially. (Both are a matter of social constructs, anyway.) I can't accept that generalization, so to convince me, you would need to show that this "blood prejudice" has more in common with race than the fact that both involve heredity in some way.
Also, I don't think that the "fictional factors of wizardom" are an issue, since after all, there's nothing inherently fictional about a group where the prejudiced-against "characteristic" is considered to "go away" automatically over the generations. Exhibit A: immigrants, as discussed above. You don't need the "Fantastic" part of Fantastic Racism for this bit.
Lynn
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
The Malfoys and the Weasleys have a family feud going on. As soon as Draco recognized Ron as a Weasley, he hated him.
This is prejudice; this is based on heredity.
But it isn't racism.
Lynn
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
Really, no matter how it's sliced, blood prejudice is racism.
You seem to be reducing "anything that involves heredity" to race.
It we are talking about a society level prejudice based on heredity, then, yes, I put that in the racism category. I feel confident enough in that to say, that yes, that is racism.
The Malfoys and the Weasleys have a family feud going on. As soon as Draco recognized Ron as a Weasley, he hated him.
This is prejudice; this is based on heredity.
But it isn't racism.
1) Family feuds are not the same thing as wizard world blood prejudice. Family feuds are a private issue between two families, not a societal phenomenon. That's the difference between the heredity counting for family feuds and the heredity counting for racial prejudice.
2) The Weasleys were disliked by the Malfoy's because they were "blood traitors". That's racist.
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
The Gaunts, and in some aspects the Blacks, reminds me more of stories about crazy nobles with nothing to their name, than it reminds me of nazis.
But I am also quite sure JKR wanted to make a parallel between the prejudice in the wizarding world and racism in the real world
- maybe she tried to to show two things at one time, both racism and classism (if that is a word), and it is that, which gives us problems in the parallels.
I hope you will excuse my English, it is not my first language.
Anna M
Re: Which actually brings things back to Terri's post
That's a circular argument because it assumes being a blood traitor has got anything to do with race. Cedrella Black was blasted off the family tree for marrying Septimus Weasley, who was a blood-traitor. Yet he was a pureblood who married a pureblood witch. Arthur and Molly were purebloods who were labeled blood-traitors long before any of their children married. Being a blood-traitor is a political designation, not a racial one.
I
Certainly racism, as we know it in the real world, and wizarding blood-based prejudice are alike in many respects, as sailorlum discusses. However, with the Muggleborns we have a situation that has *no* parallel whatsoever in the real world, and it is precisely the key features of this situation that are at issue in the prejudice against them. The analogy of racism, while it fits in many respects and perhaps provides a certain emotional punch, is not a perfect fit by any means. IMHO using the term 'racism' and only that term to describe the prejudice against Muggleborns elides these differences. Which bothers me on several fronts.
Firstly, I just personally have a pet peeve about discussing things without being precise about them. It can lead to misunderstanding, and it can also keep salient features of a thing/situation/character/whatever from being considered, leading to sometimes to problematic reasoning.
And as I've just, there is no direct parallel to the Muggleborn in our world. Importing terms from our world onto theirs in this case produces a bad fit. In our world, if we want to look at this in terms of categories, we have two categories in which to place a given example of prejudice if its status as racism is the issue. It is either racism or not-racism (some other prejudice). However, I think the situation in the WW regarding the existence of Muggleborns produces a form of prejudice that does not fit neatly in *either* category - because the set of factors at issue do not map cleanly onto either the set of factors involved in real-world racism OR a set of real-world factors utterly unconnected to race. In some ways it fits the definition of racism, but in some ways it doesn't. It is both/and or neither/nor.
Part II
Let me emphasize that: I am *not* attempting to claim prejudice against Muggleborns is not like racism at all, or that racism is an entirely wrong term to be using. Call it "racism and…" if you like. There are fundamental similarities. I am merely saying that the analogy is *flawed in certain respects* and that thinking of and discussing this prejudice *as if it were not a flawed analogy* can be problematic. Talking casually about this prejudice as just racism can (*can,* not must) lead one to be a bit sloppy in thinking about it and following up all the implications, etc.
Therefore I simply am attempting to recognize the fact that the analogy is flawed by establishing a third category only applicable to the WW: blood prejudice. A prejudice which shares key features with real-world racism but which is not an exact parallel to it, due to a situation that has no real-world parallel.
Obviously (and this shouldn't need stating but given that people can sometimes make unwarranted assumptions about others' motives) all forms of prejudice are equally vile and ought not to be engaged in. Prejudice is prejudice and despicable. It is equally despicable no matter what you call it, also. And I'm not demanding that everyone adopt my terminology, I'm merely laying out my reasons for using the term blood prejudice myself. Do as you wish, everyone.
That said, attempting to clarify exactly what form(s) of prejudice is (are) at work in a given scenario in no way necessitates ranking them as better/worse or excusing any of them. Attempting to determine if racism, misogyny or religion-based prejudice (or any other applicable form of prejudice) was the dominant factor in the treatment of a group of Saudi-Arabian Muslim women in the US does not mean any of those attitudes is better than the others. Likewise, attempting to ascertain if racism as understood in the real world is really the best way of thinking about anti-Muggleborn prejudice does not in any way mean that racism is seen as too awful to apply. OF COURSE blood prejudice is as foul as racism. It merely is a different type of prejudice in certain respects.
Part III
Secondly, possession of an ability to do magic is essential to the distinction between 'races' here, and the manner in which race, talent and ability (as in ableism) are linked in this metaphor produces some VERY icky results when you follow it through. raisin_gal has some essays on hp_essays providing a far more comprehensive look at this than I could, so if anyone is interested go there. Calling this prejudice racism pure and simple...it seems to me that doing so allows these disturbing elements to go unchallenged. YMMV.
Thirdly, it implicitly supports a very disturbing (IMO) attitude in the books that, unlike prejudice against Muggleborns, continues in the Epilogue. I mean the characters' and the *text's* prejudice against Muggles. And yes, I know that the prejudice purebloods exhibit towards Muggleborns is based explicitly from their Muggle ancestry - this does not necessarily mean that those who view Muggleborns as equals extend Muggles the same courtesy. No wizard in the WW does that, that we see - not even the Muggleborns themselves after a few years. We see this clearly in their treatment of Muggles, and also in the attitudes of supposedly enlightened wizards like Arthur Weasley. He seems to regard Muggles as little better than chimpanzees, or at best children, with his patronizing "aren't they clever" comments and attitude that Muggles are a nice object for him to study as he sees fit. It reminds me a bit of the attitude of the Victorians, who liked to dig up Egyptian mummies, with the help or poorly-paid Egyptian servants, and unwrap them at parties back home for a brief bit of horror and fun, without ever thinking about the fact that this is another culture they have reduced to merely functioning for their entertainment.
Thinking Muggles oughtn't be wantonly murdered is not the same as according them full equality - animal rights activists will go to jail to keep labs from experimenting on monkeys, but do any of them expect monkeys be accorded the right to vote and govern themselves? No. Because the overwhelmingly dominant attitude in Western culture is that animals are not the equals of human beings. (I'm not claiming they are/aren't, I'm merely setting up a parallel.)
Re: Part III
Claiming that prejudice against Muggleborns is wrong *because* they are wizards plays into this prejudice. To quote from upthread on this:
"Never mind the Muggles (or anyone other than wizards), for a moment. I'm talking about wizard on wizard racism, here. Pure-bloods, half-bloods, and Muggle-borns are all wizards. Blood purists may deny that Muggle-borns are part of the wizard race, but that doesn't make it so. Regardless of whether Muggle-borns are "mutations" or have wizard ancestry somewhere, they are wizards and are part of the wizard race."
"Jewish people are part of the human race, and yet they were still declared separate from the Aryan race which is also part of the human race, and Jews were furthermore declared sub-human in comparison by the Nazis/Aryan supremacists. Muggle-borns are part of the wizard race, and yet they were still declared separate from the pure-bloods and half-bloods which are also part of the wizard race, and Muggle-borns were furthermore delcared sub-wizard in comparison by the DE's/pure-blood supremacists. Same difference."
There is a confusion here between 'race' as distinguishing different varieties of human being and 'race' as distinguishing the human species from others. Mapping this onto wizard/Muggle relations produces a disturbing result, however:
1) The issue with purebloods is whether Muggleborns count as part of the "wizard race." See first quote. Muggleborns are prejudiced against because they are not (to the bigots) seen as part of the wizard race - they are seen as little better than the Muggles from which they are descended. Muggles are also considered inferior, of course. Claiming that Muggleborns are pureblood' equals explicitly *because they are also wizards* is implicitly supporting the view that Muggles are inferior, because it makes the *separation* of Muggleborns and Muggles the key to Muggleborns' status as equal to other wizards. Claiming that Muggleborns are purebloods' equals because they and Muggles are all human, regardless of magical ability, is something different.
2) The issue with the Nazis, as with all real-world racists, is whether members of other races count as human. That is, as part of the "human race." Precisely. See second quote.
The parallels these quotes set up are thus:
"Blood purists…deny Muggleborns are part of the wizard race." They "were declared separate from the pure-bloods and half-bloods which are also part of the wizard race…and furthermore declared sub-wizard." Muggleborns are however part of the wizard race, and therefore are purebloods' equals.
Nazis declared Jews "separate from the Aryan race, which is also part of the human race." They were also declared "sub-human." Jews however are also part of the human race and therefore Aryans' equals.
Blood-purists = Nazis/Aryan supremacists
Purebloods = Aryans
Muggleborns = Jews
[Halfbloods = persons of mixed Jewish/Aryan descent]
Purebloods, Muggleborns and perhaps half-bloods are seen as the various races within the overarching "wizarding race."
Aryans, Jews and perhaps people of mixed descent are considered the various races within the overarching "human race."
Therefore, the claim that anti-Muggleborn prejudice mirrors the Nazis' racism produces this analogy:
wizards = humans
What about Muggles indeed.
The result is there structurally in how anti-Muggleborn prejudice is defined here, even if one explicitly claims that Muggles are also human.
a simple distinction
On the contrary, Muggle racism has worked in precisely the opposite way. In HPverse, it is ruling-class blood that determines status: one documented magical ancestor (let's not split hairs about how many generations back) is enough to make you a member of the magical class. Purebloods might sneer at your dirty blood, but there is not one instance in canon where half-bloods are documented to suffer actual disadvantage on the basis of their blood. (One of the victims of the Muggle-born Registration Committee protests that he *is* half-blood, but it isn't confirmed that he is speaking the truth.)
In Nazi Germany, it was underclass blood that determined status:one documented recent Jewish ancestor was enough to be classified as Jewish, a "subhuman" with no rights. Likewise, people with mixed Negro-Caucasian ancestry were not treated as "cooured", not "whites". One Negro grandparent made one a "quadroon"; one great-grandparent an "octoroon".
If the DH-Ministry followed the same logic as Hitler, Mrs Cattermole's children would have been dragged in front of the MBRC alongside her. And Seamus Finnegan would have been excluded from Hogwarts.
Insofar as JK has anything to say about Nazi racism, she gets it wrong, except for the motherhood-and-apple-pie statement that racism is vile. But what I find more offensive is that mostly she *isn't* using the HPverse to say something about the Holocaust; she is using the Holocaust to add life to the HPverse.
Re: a simple distinction
duj
PS Just noticed a mistyped sentence. It should have read "Likewise, western societies treated people with mixed Negro-Caucasian ancestry as "coloureds", not as whites. Having one ..."
Re: a simple distinction
#1: Analogies/parallels don't have to be perfect to work or to be precise where it counts. If you disagree with me on this, then there really is no point in us discussing the issue further (even if I had the desire to do so), because our viewpoints are too far apart to bridge.
#2: If you believe that the parallel between blood prejudice (as a whole or in part) and racism (overall or in the particular instance of Nazi style racism or whatever style racism) is not precise where it counts, then again, there is no point in us discussing the issue further.
#3:
one documented magical ancestor (let's not split hairs about how many generations back) is enough to make you a member of the magical class.
Actually, that's not entirely true. If a wizard couple has a Squib, that child is not considered a wizard. Squibs have direct magical ancestry and yet they are not considered part of the magical class. They are encouraged to assimilate into Muggle society.
Here's how I see the parallel between Nazi style racism and blood prejudice style racism breaking down (in case you didn't see it in one of my earlier posts, and are curious):
~ blood purists = Aryan racists = majority race bigots
~ pure-bloods = Aryans = majority race
~ half-bloods = mixed-race/Mischlings and/or Aryans with traceable non-Aryan ancestry = mix of a majority race and minority race and/or majority race with traceable minority race ancestry
~ Muggle-borns = non-Aryans (e.g. Jews) that aren't "disabled" = minority race that is viewed by some racists as being non-human
~ Muggles = non-Aryans (e.g Jews) that are "disabled" = minority race that is viewed by some racists as being non-human and is "disabled" to boot for a double whammy as being seen as a blight on humanity by these particular racists who are also ableists
~ Squibs = "the disabled" among Aryans and Mischlings = viewed as equivalent to the minority race (by these particular racists who are also ableists) and deemed a blight on humanity
#4:
But what I find more offensive is that mostly she *isn't* using the HPverse to say something about the Holocaust; she is using the Holocaust to add life to the HPverse.
JKR is using an analogy/parallel to Nazi style racism to say some things about racism, while she tells her story. I think messages like "racism is bad" and "racism is insidious" (which are two of the messages I get from the books), are worthy causes for using a parallel to Nazi style racism and the Holocaust. I agree with JKR's reasoning for making the blood prejudice = racism parallel, and I interpret her message to be against racism. I guess you can just lump me in with JKR on that account.
***
After this reply and the two replies I'm going to make in this thread, I will not be replying to you any further. Respond if you like (to this reply or others), but I'm not going to reply. If you don't get my point at this point (and I'm speaking generally to the whole topic of blood prejudice = racism, as well as the point I'm making in this individual reply), then I officially give up.