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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?
Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
Regretably the facts appear contradictory, the population dynamics weren't worked out consistently by Rowling and we have to fill in gaps. We do not know how many Muggle-borns enter Hogwarts each year, though as Rowling keeps changing her mind it seems the number is less than we were led to think originally. We do not know how many students in total are in a typical Hogwarts year, though we have one year where the number was 40 and another where it was over 100. Right now I am inclined to think that Harry's year had no more than 5-6 Muggleborns (Hermione in Gryffindor, 1 in Ravenclaw, Justin and 2-3 others in Hufflepuff - Terri convinced me elsewhere that Muggle society teaches Hufflepuff values and students that spent several years in Muggle schools are more likely to Sort into that House than any other). If we assume Harry's year (and Ginny's, and the one following) were unusually small because of the war we can have a magical society of some 10,000 where Muggle-borns are about 5% in total. How well are Muggle-borns doing in Wizardng Britain? We don't really know. It can be argued any odd way. We do not know how many Ministry employees are Muggle-born, but we do know that after the removal of those who were known as such from their positions the Ministry managed its business as usual. Is this because Ministry hiring practices discriminated against Muggle-borns or is it simply because there aren't that many Muggle-borns in the first place? We see Muggleborn refugees in the countryside and Diagon Alley, implying these people had no support, neither in the Wizarding World or outside it - but then those who did have such support would be invisible to us. So we don't really know if at peaceful times Muggle-borns face any hurdles in wizarding society beyond dirty looks from a handful of people and not being familiar with wizarding fairy-tales and other elements of wizarding home life.
With all the assumption that Muggle-borns are entitled an entry to wizarding society simply for being magical and anything else would be racist we cannot examine the question if Hogwarts education and entry into magical society is what best serves the needs of Muggle-born children and whether they would have chosen that life for themselves had they known all the facts in time. Nor can we argue if this is best for the wizarding world, or even the Muggle world - because we are supposedly excusing racism. And even if one might be able to understand that the unqualified integration of Muggle-borns may have negative consequences to some, if we just use the term racism we can't allow any other approach.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
O_o But- but…Potterverse wizards aren’t real! We aren’t really Muggles because Muggle is term applied to non-magical humans based on the in-Potterverse fact that there are magical humans. If we could somehow climb into the books and literally go into the world of HP, then we would be Muggles. But we can’t, so we aren’t really. It’s being cute to say we are Muggles (and I know JKR talks about being a Muggle)…but that’s just for fun. Er, well it’s meant to be, anyway.
The treatment of Muggles is important (although, much of the books take place in the wizard world, so the issue doesn’t get explored as much as wizard on wizard racism), and I’m sure we are meant to see racist treatment of Muggles as racist (and hypocritical with regards to anti-purist characters). I think JKR gave her readers enough credit to know that and gave enough indications that a good percentage of her readership got that (at least by the end). Perhaps you would have preferred more Anvillicousness and/or more exploration of anti-Muggleism? I can understand being disappointed and I can understand feeling like JKR botched her handling of blood prejudice type racism, but that doesn’t make the analogy of blood prejudice = racism any less true. Like I said to mary j, I guess you can just lump me in with JKR, because I agree with her reasoning for making the blood prejudice = racism parallel.
…and what I want for the story is neither Voldemort's nor Harry's victory but just to have that world implode, or at least keep itself contained so its internal issues don't spill into mine.
O_o But- but it’s fiction! The world of HP can’t really spill into ours because it’s not real. I guess some crazy person could declare themselves a pure-blood supremacist or a Death Eater and declare you a Muggle and then go after you…but that kind of thing could happen with any book because crazy people will do crazy stuff.
Also, if you are going to be rooting for the destruction of the Potterverse world, then rooting for Voldemort would be the way to go. If Voldy wins, then that increases the chances of a war with the Muggle world, and that would increase the chance of nukes being brought in, and that would increase the chance of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Regarding Harry and xenophobia:
Therefore he cannot be used as an example that wizarding prejudice is based on race rather than on culture, or that it is based purely on ancestry in itself rather than on ancestry as an indication for culture and cultural knowledge.
What part of “anti-Muggle-born prejudice contains elements of both racism and xenophobia” do you not understand?
Also, using ancestry as “an indication for culture and cultural knowledge” (which is stereotyping and not good) and then having prejudice against that group based on their supposed or actual cultural heritage, is racist as well as being ethnic discrimination.
Regarding Hermione’s situation vs. Viktor’s:
And on top of that a student who has Muggle relatives is a security risk for the wizarding world - an issue that has been relevant long before the formal Statute of Secrecy, in fact since the founding of Hogwarts - something that is not an issue with foreign-born wizards with no such relatives.
This doesn’t take away from the blood based prejudice inherent in anti-Muggle-born prejudice (which I’ve already gone over arguments for), nor does it excuse that form of racism or make it any less racist. Genuine issues and problems are not an excuse for racism. They may explain it, partially, but they do not excuse it.
(cont.)
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
I strongly disagree. Recognizing anti-Muggle-born prejudice as racism (or blood prejudice in general as racism) doesn’t have to stop anyone from looking into the explanations for it. I did a whole essay about “Snape and prejudice” that focused on the reasons behind Snape’s own descent into blood prejudice, and I acknowledged blood prejudice as racism, and I was able to explore the explanations behind Snape’s prejudice, just fine.
Similarly, I can explore why the pure-bloods don’t want Muggle-borns accepted, and still acknowledge blood prejudice and anti-Muggle-born prejudice as racism. Allow me to demonstrate:
Some reasons I think blood purists want to oppress or get rid of Muggle-borns…
1) fear of “blood tainting”
2) fear that Muggle-borns could take jobs/wealth/whatever that would otherwise go to “true wizards”
3) fear that the Muggle relatives of Muggle-borns could compromise the secrecy of the wizarding world
4) fear that if the Muggle-born population increases they could get together, turn the tables, and oppress “true wizards”
5) fear of the unknown (e.g. “what terrible Muggle ideas might those Muggle-borns bring with them”)
6) fear of Muggle-borns bringing bad Muggle ideas with them into wizarding society
I could go on, but that will do for a small demonstration, I think.
Hmmm, seems like blood prejudice is pretty fear based. Now, some of those fears are irrational (like the fear of “blood tainting”) and others are based on somewhat valid concerns (like the fear of wizarding world secrecy being compromised). Valid concern or irrational, these reasonings don’t excuse the bigotry, of course. And see how my recognizing blood based bigotry as racism didn’t prevent me from exploring the explanations?
the only correct solution is the continued admittance and integration of Muggle-borns.
Are you suggesting that an appropriate solution would be to deny Muggle-borns admittance to the wizard world? If the answer is “yes” and if you don’t see why that is a bad solution (for everyone) and wrong, then I suspect we disagree on some real life issues as well. I should note at this point, that I don’t think anti-immigrationism is any better than racism, and I’m not going to argue that issue with you.
With all the assumption that Muggle-borns are entitled an entry to wizarding society simply for being magical and anything else would be racist we cannot examine the question if Hogwarts education and entry into magical society is what best serves the needs of Muggle-born children and whether they would have chosen that life for themselves had they known all the facts in time.
Some reasons why it is a good idea to for everyone to not deny Muggle-borns entry into the wizarding world:
1) it behooves Muggle-borns to learn how to control their powers. Better if they learn how to control their powers so accidents don’t happen. And, it would also be a gaining of knowledge and knowledge is good.
2) it’s good for Muggle society, if the Muggle-borns learn to control their magic, so accidents are less likely to happen.
3) it’s good for wizard society to have more diversity. New ideas and greater genetic diversity are some of the rewards to wizard society.
I would also like to point out that attendance at Hogwarts isn’t mandatory in the wizarding world (except for when Voldemort made it so), so parents are free to decide not to send their children into the wizarding world and Hogwarts. Muggles aren’t being forced to give up their magical children to the wizarding world. Allowing Muggle-borns into the wizarding world just opens up an opportunity for them.
Nor can we argue if this is best for the wizarding world, or even the Muggle world - because we are supposedly excusing racism.
I think if you are advocating the barring of admittance of Muggle-borns to the wizarding world, then yeah, whatever particular type of bigotry that is, that would be supporting a bigoted and fear based solution.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
On the other hand, Oryx just tried to do something in the same general category: she raised the question of whether going to Hogwarts is the best thing for individual Muggleborns, and whether accepting Muggleborn immigrants is best for the WW as a society.
And as a result, you thought that a reasonable follow-up was to ask her if she was suggesting it'd be appropriate to universally deny Muggle-borns admittance to the wizard world... and then you thought her post made it reasonable to raise the possibility, indirectly worded, that she's highly anti-immigrant. (And no better than a racist, since as you mentioned in that post, and everyone else so far has agreed, anti-immigrationism isn't any better than racism.)
You just asked questions, I know. But... you'd think those questions would be answered by the fact that everyone here has stated, ad literal nauseum, that we're against racism, anti-immigrantism, etc., and find all of these biases equally morally repugnant.
So... yeah. ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ma
Lynn
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
I should note that just because someone says something prejudiced that doesn't make them for prejudice. They just failed to live up to their ideals, in that case, if that's the case. <----[trying to head off any "you said I'm for prejudice" drama]
Also, I've said a bunch of stuff over and over, and people (including you) have still gotten confused over things like, for instance, whether I'm also arguing that anti-Muggle prejudice is racism... So...yeah. Don't know where you get off getting on a high horse about someone having to repeat stuff.
Finally, maybe oryx really believes that Muggle-borns should be barred entry from the wizarding world and maybe they don't. Neither you nor I know, because we aren't mind readers. Hence I asked questions. Better to ask, than assume.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
Might I suggest that instead of suggesting the negative possibility, you suggest the positive alternative with an "I think you probably mean" (or something similar), and see if the person you're talking to corrects *that*? Because I suspect that you don't actually intend to accuse people of stuff, but the negative possibilities come across as accusations.
The approach I'm suggesting would help avoid misunderstanding. ...Or if there were misunderstanding, it would at least be less hurtful misunderstanding.
Lynn
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
Might I suggest that instead of suggesting the negative possibility...
Holy hypocrisy, Batman! Did you just suggest for me to "stop suggesting the negative possibility" while "suggesting the negative possibility"[*] to me??
/|\
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Now this question is rhetorical. Notice how I didn't say "If so, this is hypocrisy." I said "Holy hypocrisy, Batman!"
Also, if I "raise an inflammatory possibility" it's because I think that possibility exists and that is not part of any strategy. That's just me asking a question.
I will say this: if I don't follow a question up with an "If that's true" type of statement, that question is very likely rhetorical and my way of saying "Aw, hell no! O_o"
Because I suspect that you don't actually intend to accuse people of stuff, but the negative possibilities come across as accusations.
Well, that kind of statement has less offense potential than the declarative statement in the PS, but for me (I can't say for you, since I can't read your mind) sometimes a question is more honest, since I can't always say I think the positive alternative. Sometimes I'm leaning more towards the negative alternative. Better to ask the question, I think.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
As a matter of fact, I am not a hypocrite. You see, what I said about suggesting that this was a rhetorical strategy? I saw that as the positive alternative, where you were inadvertently making accusations you didn't really mean.
It was what you said earlier in the thread led me to believe that that was a strategy you were using. First you had said:
If you want to reject the label of racism for blood prejudice, then I submit to you that blood prejudice is just as foul as whatever you would call racism.
I responded:
If one considers all prejudice equally bad, and one believes that everyone else in the conversation also has that perspective, why would this need to be said? Naturally, I assumed that you thought that at least *someone* here didn't agree with the perspective that all prejudice is equally bad.
The key moment, where you answered:
I figured the response to my statement would be “of course blood prejudice is as bad as racism” and then we would have a point of agreement.
Does your answer not sound exactly like what I suggested you were doing, here?
I'm sorry you took my post badly, but I did actually mean to be helpful.
Well, that kind of statement has less offense potential than the declarative statement in the PS, but for me (I can't say for you, since I can't read your mind) sometimes a question is more honest, since I can't always say I think the positive alternative. Sometimes I'm leaning more towards the negative alternative. Better to ask the question, I think.
This is the Internet; if you get other people's views wrong, they will not hesitate to correct you. ;)
Questions may sound more neutral, but my point was that they *aren't*, necessarily. If you still think it's better to ask the question, then that's your prerogative. I simply wanted to point out that you may be phrasing things in an inflammatory way, without realizing it.
(After all, no one can anticipate every possible reaction to their words.)
Lynn
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
You've missed my point. Condescension and people presuming to tell me what I think or what I mean [with a bald-faced declarative statement] is what I hate.
As a matter of fact, I am not a hypocrite.
If I give you the benefit of the doubt, I would say you came off as hypocritical, that's for sure. I doubt your sincerity, however.
You seemed to be criticizing my "rhetorical strategy". Saying someone has a bad strategy is suggesting a negative possibility, is it not? I would say that it is, but I don't know about you. Also, if you don't think my strategy was bad, then I don't know why you even brought it up.
I explained the difference between what I do when I ask a rhetorical question and what I do when I'm asking a question I don't know the answer to (whatever my suspicions).
This "If you want to reject the label of racism for blood prejudice, then I submit to you that blood prejudice is just as foul as whatever you would call racism." that you keep harping on, was not a question. It was an "if then" statement. I already explained I was trying to use a strategy there. That didn't work, so I gave up strategy.
This is not to say that I didn't think the possibility existed that people would say "nah, blood prejudice isn't as bad a racism" I was just giving people the benefit of the doubt and figuring that the response would be "of course it is". Again, I'm not a mind reader. And again, I made no declarative statement. If you're offended that I have doubts, then I guess you'll just be offended, because I have doubts.
Having said that, regarding this "Also, if I "raise an inflammatory possibility" it's because I think that possibility exists and that is not part of any strategy. That's just me asking a question.": the crux of my point (that you seem to have missed) was that I am not just "raising inflammatory possibilities" without believing the possibility exists. Also, I was thinking only of the question we were dealing with, and not that earlier thing you keep harping on. Including the earlier thing, I'll amend my statement to say: I am not just "raising inflammatory possibilities" without believing the possibility exists. And if I actually ask a question, that isn't meant to be rhetorical, I'm asking a question that I don't feel I know the answer to (whatever my suspicions).
Now, having said all that, I'm not saying that I follow my pattern 100% of the time in terms of what is also strategy [which is in addition to raising the possibility] and what is just me raising a possibility (I try to be consistent, but I can't say I don't make an oopsie and deviate from the pattern, from time to time). Strategy or not, if I raise the possibility, I believe it exists.
where you were inadvertently making accusations you didn't really mean.
A lot of people, including myself, find it very rude to presume to tell [as in, make a bald-faced declarative statement like the one in italics above] another person what they meant. It just comes off condescending.
This is the Internet; if you get other people's views wrong, they will not hesitate to correct you. ;)
Right back at ya.
Love the passive-aggressive wink-smiley, btw. <---sarcasm. Yeah, I think you're being passive aggressive with that.
The conversation has officially deteriorated from the meta, and I'm done. I no longer have the patience. 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.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
So what on earth is wrong about my assuming that you were using it again?
There's nothing that terrible about using a strategy that's inadvertently inflammatory. I did say that I thought it was inadvertent. So why are you so outraged?
the crux of my point (that you seem to have missed) was that I am not just "raising inflammatory possibilities" without believing the possibility exists.
No, I didn't miss that. I understand that you want to check. But you can check with two different subtexts (note SUBtexts):
"I don't think you meant (bigoted suggestion) when you said such-and-such, but what I took from that was..."
"I get the impression from your saying such-and-such that you meant (bigoted suggestion)."
Maybe the latter is a more accurate representation of what you're thinking (which is fine), but you'll get confirmation however you phrase it. Maybe some people do consider the former subtext condescending. That hadn't occurred to me; I certainly don't find it condescending. But I am alerting *you* to the fact that there are people who will find the latter insulting, too.
With the ;), I was trying to restore this to a friendlier tone. Heck, the whole point of my original post was to head off possible conflict, for crying out loud.
I get your point about the condescension, although not everyone thinks that way. And I understand that you consider blood prejudice to be racism, and that that's because you find it a close enough fit. It isn't a hard concept to understand, just a hard one for me to agree with.
Lynn
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
Since when is that an argument in fandom?
The treatment of Muggles is important (although, much of the books take place in the wizard world, so the issue doesn’t get explored as much as wizard on wizard racism), and I’m sure we are meant to see racist treatment of Muggles as racist (and hypocritical with regards to anti-purist characters).
I'm not. Because the word Muggle was chosen by Rowling to imply foolish and lacking in imagination, IIRC and is used by all sides, including as part of the 'clean' word 'Muggle-born'. See also relevant Accio-quotes page, especially the first 2 quotes. Also, we see the attitude towards Muggles pervasive among the 'good guys', including Dumbledore's theatrical Muggle-baiting and Muggle mind control, and we are supposed to find it comical. There is no protesting voice, no dissent whatsoever by anyone, including Muggle-born Hermione, who joins the mind-wipers.
O_o But- but it’s fiction! The world of HP can’t really spill into ours because it’s not real.
But it can and does spill into the world of Hermione's parents or the Muggle prime minister. In their name I refuse to cheer Harry or Dumbledore. A pos on all their houses.
Also, using ancestry as “an indication for culture and cultural knowledge” (which is stereotyping and not good) and then having prejudice against that group based on their supposed or actual cultural heritage, is racist as well as being ethnic discrimination.
Err, no, it's just using the information you have to fill in gaps. If you hear someone's name and recognize it as coming from a certain language or culture you might have a mental image of how that person might look based on what people of that culture generally look like. You might be mistaken (because the person was adopted, or the family is mutiply intermarried or some other reason).
I strongly disagree. Recognizing anti-Muggle-born prejudice as racism (or blood prejudice in general as racism) doesn’t have to stop anyone from looking into the explanations for it.
It doesn't necessarily have to but it usually does. Because currently in western society an accusation of racism is a conversation stopper (or derailer, to be more accurate). The best way to make anything criticism-proof is to label its critcism racism.
Are you suggesting that an appropriate solution would be to deny Muggle-borns admittance to the wizard world?
The Muggle-borns even when they discover their magic don't know there is a wizarding world. There is no reason why they *have* to be removed them from their families to a strange world. They already have a place where they are and where they belong. I don't see why having magic is more important than say, being British to the identity of a British Muggle-born magical person. I think that under some conditions a complete closing off of the wizarding world is a valid solution. However that would require wizards to stop living among Muggles and interfering in Muggle affairs. They would have to live on their own territory, marry only among themselves etc. However this only works if all wizards agree. Anyone crossing out of wizardland would be destabalizing the agreement. So instead of having the Ministry Obliviating Muggles who were exposed to magic the Ministry would put the effort (mostly) into keeping the wizards in.
Alternately, those interested in wizarding isolation should be free to form their isolated Wizardland with their secluded wizarding school while the rest of wizards attend Hogwarts.
However I would prefer that either wizards live in Wizardlands that have open relationships with the Muggle governments or wizards live openly as citizens of the Muggle countries with official representation in those countries' governing bodies.
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
I find the question of wizard-Muggle relations as presented by the Potterverse an interesting intellectual challenge as it presents a problem that differs from typical inter-group conflicts in non-trivial ways. Simply assuming the solution has to be the same as in superficially similar real-world situations completely misses the point.
(BTW I don't mind provocative debate style. I do mind when I feel my responses are being misread.)
Re: Why is it important not to call pureblood prejudice racism?
I disagree with this. While magical parents can make an informed choice, Muggle parents are not in position to do so because they do not know and cannot know the facts about Hogwarts education, how much it differs from typical education. They can't see the castle, they are not invited to visit it, they don't meet anyone but a chosen representative of the school who would do all s/hey can, including the use of mental magical manipulation (see Dumbledore and Mrs Cole) to ensure the child attends Hogwarts. They are not making a free choice they are being manipulated into it. And every year a child spends at Hogwarts s/he falls further behind in hir ability to make a living in the Muggle world. The wizarding world, with Hogwarts as its gateway, is very much like a cult and it uses the means that cults use to trap followers.
The fic I would like to see is one where the Grangers, after returning from Australia, contact the Creeveys and form a support group for Muggle parents of magical children. Perhaps they'd also have Seamus' father. Perhaps Severus, now living in the Muggle world, helps them track down parents of children under 11 who have yet to receive their letters (I bet he has a way to get the information from the Hogwarts magical quill).