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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?
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.
Part V (the one above should be Part IV)
To use a different example of real-world racism that mirrors the issue of *descent,* consider this.
Some real-world racists claim black people are less human than white people because they are closer to being monkeys. (Obviously this is a truly vile thing to say or think.) We know from modern science that human beings' ancestors descended from primates.
We don't know if modern wizards' distant ancestors evolved the ability to do magic (that is, a gene mutation bred true) and separated themselves from the rest of humanity in this regard, or got it through interbreeding with other species, or what have you. We do know that magic tends to breed true, and therefore pureblood status can be acquired over time by intermarriage between Muggleborns and their descendants, and other wizards. This supports the possibility that all wizards descend from some mutation back in the distant past, however.
In some ways the attitude of pureblood supremacists towards Muggleborns as hardly better than the Muggles they descend from (or even no different than those Muggles, just with stolen magic) echoes that of those people who think black people are hardly better than the chimpanzees we all descend from. Blood purists do indeed regard Muggles as less human than themselves.
However, the analogy is again disturbing when it comes to Muggles:
blood purists = white racists
Muggleborns = black people
Muggles = monkeys
To take this as a good analogy of blood prejudice in the WW as being like real-world racism is in itself offensive and racist because it implies that, just as Muggleborns are sudden magical sports arising from fully-Muggle unions, so black people would be the equivalent of sudden human sports arising from the breeding of two monkeys. Obviously that is a vile notion.
The fact that attempts to draw direct parallels between actual examples of real-world racism with the prejudice against Muggleborns tends to produce such offensive nonsense as the examples above give demonstrates, I think, another way in which the analogy is flawed in certain respects. If it weren't flawed I ought not to be able to find examples of real-world racism that produce this sort of ugliness when compared with Muggleborn prejudice - the one ought to map cleanly onto the other.
Claiming that prejudice against Muggleborns is racist *because they are wizards, like purebloods* buys into the purebloods' own bigoted notion that Muggles are inferior to wizards. THAT is a closer analogy to real-world racism than anti-Muggleborn prejudice, although it still gets icky due to the mapping of race, ableism and talent onto the same metaphor as raisin_gal describes.
And now I'm getting tired of discussing this.
TL;DR: anti-Muggleborn prejudice (blood prejudice) is similar to real-world racism in key respects. In other respects it is different, and these differences produce icky results when subsumed under the notion of racism. Particularly the equation of wizardkind and humankind.
Coda, to sailorlum: wealth and magic are not the same type of privilege. One is theoretically available to all, in the right circumstance; nothing in one's biological makeup precludes it. The other is a privilege only from the perspective of *openly practicing* magic. It is not a privilege from the POV of biology, since the *ability* to do magic is what distinguishes a wizard from a Muggle. Otherwise 9-year-old Harry was not a wizard any more than Marge was, yet we know he was one. A wizard may have their wand snapped but they do not then become *a Muggle.* The comparison with Jews is inaccurate in that respect.
Re: Part V (the one above should be Part IV)
blood purists = white racists
Muggleborns = black people
Muggles = monkeys
To take this as a good analogy of blood prejudice in the WW as being like real-world racism is in itself offensive and racist because it implies that, just as Muggleborns are sudden magical sports arising from fully-Muggle unions, so black people would be the equivalent of sudden human sports arising from the breeding of two monkeys. Obviously that is a vile notion.
Even if we take that specific analogy you’ve made (and I would make some adjustments, but later on that), even if we take that analogy, that analogy is a good demonstration is why real world racism is vile and offensive and why HP blood prejudice is racism (and also similarly vile and offensive in the same kind of way real life racism is vile and offensive). Some real life white racists do think that black people (and/or other non-whites) are like monkeys (like some blood purists think Muggles are like pigs [“Muggle pig men”], so that analogy works with respect to how Muggles are seen by blood purists.
I would adjust it as follows, though:
~ blood purists = white racists = majority race bigots
~ pure-bloods = whites = majority race
~ half-bloods = whites with traceable non-white ancestry* = majority race with traceable minority race ancestry
~ Muggle-borns = mixed-race = mix of a majority race and minority race
~ Muggles = non-whites = minority race that is viewed by some racists as being non-human
* (who aren’t considered mixed-race by anyone other than extremists)
/OCD
Re: Part III
Muggleborns' status in the WW hinges on whether they are part of the "wizard race." Period. Jews' status in Nazi Germany hinged on them not being of the Aryan race, and THEREFORE to the Nazis not part of the *human* race. Those who saw Jews and Aryans as equal saw Jews and Aryans as both part of the human race. They did not argue Jews were "really" Aryan.
"Wizard race" in the analogy thus takes over the place of both "Aryan race" and "human race." Which is where the problem comes from.
Re: Part III
Claiming that prejudice against Muggleborns is wrong **and is racism** *because* they are wizards...
Re: Part III
You can't contrast the racism on the one side with both ableism *and* racism, though, or else you'd be contradicting the "because Muggleborns are wizards bit."
(As a side note to Sailorlum, this particular bit doesn't address the problems I find with describing blood prejudice as racism, because my point is that this "race"/group membership "fades" over the generations among non-pureblood wizards, crucially without intermarriage as an essential factor. Race is a social construct, but it isn't a social construct that works like that. 00sevvie's looking at the problems with the analogy in the transition from Muggles to Muggleborns; I was looking at the problems with the analogy in the transition from Muggleborns to half-bloods to pure-bloods.)
Lynn
Re: Part III
But isn't the focus of the prejudice the fact that Muggleborns are descendants of Muggles? I don't see how we can make that separation regarding Muggles.
If we see wizard on Muggle prejudice as ableism but not racism, and wizard on wizard (Muggleborn) prejudice concerning Muggle ancestry as racism, then aren't we arguing the equivalent to:
prejudice of sighted people against blind people is ableism, but prejudice of sighted people descended from sighted people against sighted people descended from blind people is racism?
Which doesn't work. How are sighted people with blind parents of a different race than sighted people with sighted parents? No hereditary characteristics distinguishing one group from another as races carry over. The analogy doesn't fit. Even if we take into account race as a social construction, it's still a social construction founded on notions of heredity, taking a set of biological characteristics that *are* passed down as a starting point. That's why ancestry matters to racists and they go to insane lengths to determine the exact amount of blood from a certain group a person has. The passing down of something generation to generation matters, not the mere fact of an abstract relationship between family members.
Also, taking "wizarding" as the foundation group that one's supposed race disqualifies one from belonging to in the eyes of the bigots, creates that ugly analogy "wizard = human." To a racist, someone of a different race is less human.
I don't think we can leave Muggles out completely from any attempt to compare anti-Muggleborn prejudice to racism, because it is precisely Muggleborn's descent from Muggles that is at issue. But in order to avoid the "wizardkind = humankind" parallel, we HAVE to leave Muggles out if we go with "it's racism because they're all wizards." That is, that race would be a category applicable within the WW, but ONLY within the WW. When the determining factor of one's wizard-race would be descent from non-wizards.
I think the analogy is just flawed. In respect to certain aspects of the situation it works fine, but in respect to other aspects it doesn't. And I don't think we can say that we can selectively apply the analogy - either it it is an analogy being made or it isn't. Which is what leads to the ugliness with ableism and talent that raisin_gal discusses. An example (paraphrasing from memory).
Young Petunia is jealous of Lily because Lily can do magic, while she cannot. Their parents (although they warn Lily to be careful) are proud of their daughter for being a witch.
At first this seems like a simple jealousy over talent, like playing the piano. Not a big deal - because everyone has particular talents and particular areas of not being talents. All are equally human. BUT: if we then say the wizard/Muggle divide is one of ability, then we have something like the equivalent of blind parents praising their sighted daughter for being able to see, while their other daughter is blind like them. Less comfy, isn't it? If we apply the racism analogy that JKR intended, and ignore the flaws in the analogy, then we have the equivalent of black parents with a black daughter and (somehow) a white daughter being proud of their white daughter for being white. Ick. And somehow I don't think this is what JKR intended.
Which, again, is why I think simply calling the prejudice at issue 'racism' and leaving it at that does not work very well. JKR can't make an analogy between Muggleborn prejudice and racism, and then tell me that that analogy only applies where it isn't icky. Either an analogy is being made or not, and if the analogy produces icky results in some situations perhaps it's not an analogy that should be made.
But there are ways in other situations where the prejudice is similar to racism....one can't say it's not like racism at all. That's the difficulty.
Re: Part III
I think we need to remember that Rowling's experience of Fascism was in modern-day Portugal. The experience of the Conversos (both Muslim and Jewish, but Semitic in both cases) was very sad.
Re: Part III
It doesn’t have to be a perfect fit to work. Also, I’m not suggesting (and nowhere have I suggested) that only the term racism be used to describe prejudice against Muggle-borns (and/or blood prejudice in general). I’m saying that racism is a valid term to apply to prejudice against Muggle-borns (and blood prejudice in general), and I’m suggesting that people recognize prejudice against Muggle-borns (and blood prejudice in general) as being a form of racism.
For instance, I don’t exclusively use the term racism for blood prejudice. I may call it blood prejudice, pure-blood-ism, blood purism, pure-blood supremacy, prejudice, bigotry, blood based bigotry, racism, blood based racism, etc. With regards to the blood prejudice specifically aimed at Muggle-borns, I would add xenophobia, anti-Muggle-born-ism, anti-Muggle-born bigotry and anti-Muggle-born prejudice. Ones’ vocabulary need not be decreased by recognizing blood prejudice as racism.
Regarding calling blood prejudice racist as “[seeming] to [you] that doing so allows [other] disturbing elements to go unchallenged”:
Blood prejudice is racist in all cases. Blood prejudice is also xenophobic, in the case of Muggle-borns, some half-bloods (e.g. half-n-halfs with a Muggle parent raised in a Muggle community), Muggles, and Squibs. Blood prejudice is also classist in some cases (in the case of some pure-bloods against all blood qualities seen as beneath them, and in the case of some half-bloods against all blood qualities seen as beneath them). Blood prejudice is also ableist in the case of Muggles and Squibs. See, nothing got denied by my calling blood prejudice racist.
[*] I’ve been, up to this point, mostly talking about wizard on wizard blood prejudice, but I would include anti-Muggle prejudice and anti-Squib prejudice under the umbrella of blood prejudice in general.
Also, notice how racism applies across the board of blood prejudice. This indicates to me (among a few other reasons which I've already discussed) that racism is the biggest and overarching factor in blood prejudice. The other factors are still recognized and are still recognized as important factors, though.
(cont.)
Re: Part III
I never claimed this and I don’t know where you are getting it from (if you’re talking about me). If you are talking about characters in the books claiming this, then yes, they are being racist if they are doing that. They are also being ableist and xenophobic.
There is a confusion here between 'race' as distinguishing different varieties of human being and 'race' as distinguishing the human species from others.
I was dealing with the “wizard race” as a microcosm. I never said it was separate from the human race. It isn’t. Wizards, Squibs and Muggles are all part of the human race. In the world of HP, wizards are treated as a separate race, but that doesn’t make “the wizard race” any less a social construct or any less part of the human race. I already explained this up thread, somewhere.
Again, any concepts of race within the human race are social constructs. They aren’t truly different races from each other like humans, trolls, giants, centaurs and any of the other beings in HP are different races.
Coda, to sailorlum: wealth and magic are not the same type of privilege. One is theoretically available to all, in the right circumstance; nothing in one's biological makeup precludes it. The other is a privilege only from the perspective of *openly practicing* magic. It is not a privilege from the POV of biology, since the *ability* to do magic is what distinguishes a wizard from a Muggle. Otherwise 9-year-old Harry was not a wizard any more than Marge was, yet we know he was one. A wizard may have their wand snapped but they do not then become *a Muggle.* The comparison with Jews is inaccurate in that respect.
I never said wealth and magic are the same type of privilege. I said they are both privileges that are deemed only worthy of the majority race (Aryan and pure-blood/half-blood wizard, respectively) by racists. Again, the analogy doesn’t have to be 100% perfect/the same as the thing it’s an analogy for, for it to work and be accurate. That the comparison with Jews is inaccurate in a certain aspect doesn’t negate the validity of the analogy.
Muggleborns' status in the WW hinges on whether they are part of the "wizard race." Period. Jews' status in Nazi Germany hinged on them not being of the Aryan race, and THEREFORE to the Nazis not part of the *human* race. Those who saw Jews and Aryans as equal saw Jews and Aryans as both part of the human race. They did not argue Jews were "really" Aryan.
Again, the analogy doesn’t have to be 100% perfect/the same as the thing it’s an analogy for, for it to work and be accurate. That the comparison with Jews and Aryans is inaccurate in a certain aspect doesn’t negate the validity of the analogy.
I’m getting tired of discussing this as well. Not sure how much energy I have left.
Re: Part III
Re: Part III
I don't see where I haven't recognized that. I acknowledged the ableist aspect along with the racial aspect. I agree that there is a "conflation of race, talent and ability in a disgusting way" with regards to Muggles (and Squibs).
Re: Part III
if you want to understand what I meant, read raisin_gal's essays. The ableist aspect is not just about Muggles. It's really to complex for me to go into now, since I do have to sleep. But from your comments I do not get the sense at all that you see the same problem I do.
And, in case I have not been clear enough in my previous comments, I am tired of this discussion all together. I am not going to get into it again.
Re: Part III
I never said that it was just about Muggles (and Squibs). There's an ableist aspect to the racism against all non-wizards.
If you really want me to read raisin_gal's essays (and you feel like I'm still not getting it), then please give me the link(s).
(You have no obligation to reply or give links, of course.)
Re: Part III
Re: Part III
http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essa
Lynn
Re: Part III
*reads and thinks*
...
Nope, that essay doesn't make me see blood prejudice as a form of racial prejudice, any less. The world of HP never solved its problem of racism (although I think it ended on a hopeful note that things could get better), and there are some truly Unfortunate Implications in the books, but that doesn't break the analogy for me. Even if the HP story isn't anti-racist (and I would strongly disagree with that, even though it isn't perfect in that regard - what with some of the Unfortunate Implications), even if that were so, blood prejudice would still be a form of racism. Any botched handling of racism on the part of JKR wouldn't negate the racism of blood prejudice or any of the other kinds of racism in the books.
But hey, we don't have to agree.
Re: Part III
How good a fit does it need to be, and why doesn't it need to fit better?
I mean, we're saying that it *isn't* a close enough fit for *us*. Just telling us that it is a close enough fit doesn't convince us that it really is a close enough fit for us.
It may be a close enough fit for you, and that's fine. But why should we agree?
Lynn
Re: Part III
I'm astounded that it isn't even a "close enough" fit for you and others, but that's just the way I feel about it. *shrugs*
I'm not saying anyone here "should" do anything. No where has the word "should" crossed my keyboard. (Well, okay, I said Harry should receive as much scorn as Hermione if blood prejudice were primarily based on xenophobia (anti-immigrantism), but I never directed "should" at any real people).
Re: Part III
There is no exact analogue in the real world for HP prejudice against Muggles and Muggle-borns. As a Jew, I find JK's attempt to conflate wizard Mugglism/Muggle-bornism with anti-Semitism (Nazi or otherwise) actively offensive. Not only is it *not* analogous, but in some ways it turns the situation on its head. Historically, it is Jews who have been the endangered and/or hidden minority (and the more able, for that matter, although not traditionally in the arts of war).
I'm sorry, but I feel this needs to be said: some of the participants in this discussion value precision whereas you, Sailorlum, do not.
That is your prerogative. No one is saying that you should value precision or always/usually strive to speak precisely. Precision and imprecision both have their places. In general conversation, it is not only unnecessary but counter-productive to communication to care whether something took place at 10.26.04 or at approximately 10.30 am.
It does matter to a cardiologist, a policeman or a race judge in the execution of their duties, however. When a discussion is predicated on precise definition of terms, imprecision is an obstacle and an infliction. It muddies the waters instead of clearing them.
duj
Re: Part III
And you think you're qualified to lecture anyone else on prejudice why?
-Chalts
Re: Part III
Did you just seriously invoke a flagrant Jewish racial stereotype??? D: D: D:
What about all the Jewish warriors throughout history?! What about the Maccabees, the Jewish Brigade, and the IDF, to name a few!?
Also, ability (or lack thereof) does not equal worth (or lack of worth).
Re: Part III
As another jew: It's perfectly analogous.
although not traditionally in the arts of war
Yeah, my great-grandfather fighting in WWI disagrees with you there. So does the bible, so do most jewish historians.