brendan halpin

So JK Rowling is back on her bullshit and they’re doing a new Harry Potter series because somebody thinks they can make money off it, and I’ve seen a lot of, “sure, Joanne is a hatemonger, but what about the beloved Potterverse!”

This is usually countered by people pointing out the implicit anti-semitism of the Gringott’s goblins and Rowling’s ham-fisted attempts at writing non-white characters, so I’m not going to go into that. But, as someone who read the entire series even though it started going downhill at book 4 when they stopped editing her and it became a bloated mess, I would like to point out that if you really look at the values of the Potterverse, Joanne’s bigotry is not surprising. It was there all along.

Let’s start with Cho Chang and…those Indian girls, I’m sorry I can’t remember their names but the point here is that Ron and Harry are allowed to have sexual interest in non-white girls, but Hermione very much does not have sexual interest in non-white boys. This is some classic racist-ass shit about protecting the purity of white women from the contamination of nonwhite DNA. (If a woman of color is impregnated by a white guy, though, he’s doing her a favor because his white DNA elevates her non white DNA and brings her descendents closer to the desired state of whiteness.)

But that’s really just a side note and I suppose you could argue I am reading too much into it, though I think you’d be wrong about that. So let’s turn to the main dish of my argument.

In the Potterverse, everything is determined by accidents of birth, and there is no sense that this is unfair or should at any point be changed. It is the way things are, the rock solid structure that underlies the cozy school narrative so many of us have enjoyed.

If the books seem like they might be trying to be antiracist because of Malfoy’s “mudblood” slur aimed at Hermione (perhaps not surprising that Joanne was exceptionally good at crafting a particularly nasty slur from scratch), I assure you that’s a ruse. The point here isn’t that you shouldn’t judge people by accidents of birth; it’s just that Malfoy doesn’t understand how things work. If you are born with magical powers, you are a wizard no matter who your parents were.

This might seem sort of egalitarian until you realize that nobody gets to choose whether they’re born with magical abilities. The converse of Hermione is Hagrid, a man born to a wizarding family but lacking magical powers. He is, as is shamefully revealed at some point, “a squib,” part of that group of nonmagical wizarding families who are condemned by accident of birth to be the servant class of the wizarding world.

This is never presented as any kind of injustice, and, as far as I can remember, nobody ever questions why things work this way.

And then there are the house elves. Looking back, I should have bailed on the series as soon as this came up. I remember talking to my friend about it at the time and we were both like, “ummm…so that was weird.”

So just in case you haven’t read the books or seen the movies, the Potterverse contains a race of beings who are enslaved, but it’s okay, because they like being slaves!

Hermione, coming from outside of the wizarding world, understandably thinks this is fucked up and tries to start a movement to free the house elves. Joanne seems to have done this principally to make fun of student activists.

(Hermione, btw, is not the author stand-in of this series. That would be Harry. Interesting how Joanne has written two series with male protagonists, one of which she writes under a man’s name.)

The problem in the Potterverse isn’t that slavery exists. It’s that some masters aren’t good. This of course is the exact same revisionist bullshit that lost-cause Confederate cosplaying bigots brought to the mythology of the United States.

I just want to repeat. This universe contains a race of beings who enjoy being enslaved. Dobby is happy to be freed from serving the Malfoys, but then he goes on to serve Harry and reach the ultimate personal fulfillment when he gets to die for Harry.

This is some absolutely repugnant shit. You don’t need it. Your kids don’t need it. Nobody needs it.

I got drawn in by the coziness, by the emotional realism of Harry’s grief, and by what appeared at first to be a straighforward battle between good and evil. I overlooked all of this. I overlooked the utter lack of editing in books 4 through 7. I read the whole goddamn thing and, even worse, I gave it to my kids to read.

If you are trying to raise antiracist kids who believe in and fight for justice, be aware that these stories are actively working against you. Also the author is a piece of shit and you’re helping her bully trans people if you put money in her pocket.