Muggle prejudice
May. 12th, 2005 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackMost people will have read Harry Potter and know there's a big deal about anti-muggle prejudice. Most of the nasty characters despise muggles and muggle-descended wizards, and claim to think them inferior, which the nice characters make a point of refuting. But there's another side to it. Hagrid says harry "grew up in a family of the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on", and in a couple of other places, there's the implication that everyone tends to agree with this.
Muggle means both 'non-magic' and 'exemplifying common and stereotypical negative traits of non-magics: boring, unimaginitive and small-minded'. Only the nasty characters pretend to think that *all* muggles are hopeless, and even they don't keep it up, but people seem to accept that it's somewhat typical, even if there's plenty of counter-examples.
But didn't people use 'nigger' like that? Don't we use 'chav' like that? I hope I'm being oversensitive, but the parallels are large.
Muggle means both 'non-magic' and 'exemplifying common and stereotypical negative traits of non-magics: boring, unimaginitive and small-minded'. Only the nasty characters pretend to think that *all* muggles are hopeless, and even they don't keep it up, but people seem to accept that it's somewhat typical, even if there's plenty of counter-examples.
But didn't people use 'nigger' like that? Don't we use 'chav' like that? I hope I'm being oversensitive, but the parallels are large.