NO SERIOUSLY hp fans will hear "jk rowling is bad and theres a lot of racism in the series" and then go and defend that its not racist because of the blood purity aspect and how it "deconstructs that" when it literally never does and do you HEAR YOURSELF YOURE TALKING ABOUT BLOOD PURITY. POINT A AND POINT B ARE RIGHT THERE AND YOURE NOT CONNECTING THEM.
sorry as a former fan of the series and a trans person with reading comprehension ive had to have way too many conversations about hp recently and its driving me up a wall. merry christmas ^_^
hi im late answering this sorry i went 2 eat dinner and then forgot to respond BUT LITERALLY!!! i watched shaun's harry potter video last night and there is SO much racism in that series- way more than i remembered and i remembered a LOT. like. the fucking house elves just in general and how hermione is treated as an annoyance for saying "hey maybe we should not keep a certain race as slaves and treat them as inferior and say they like being slaves" and how the slavery and bigotry and general shittiness of the system of the wizarding world isnt resolved at all but it "ends happily ever after" like NO IT DOESNT? not for anyone but the white main characters who become cops and shit because those systems of oppression are still in place after the series ends and that's. framed as a good thing? because jkr is like, incapable of realizing that sometimes The Whole System needs to change rather than just the people in charge. and you'd think it'd be pretty easy to figure that out when the system is literally built on slavery and racism, but. well she's racist and just an idiot, so.
it's like she knows "racism is wrong" and "bigotry is wrong" as statements and tries to show that in her work by having, like, a muggle-born wizard do well in classes, or a strong woman who's still feminine or whatever, or having the wizard racists be the bad guys, but she doesn't understand WHY racism and bigotry are wrong and awful so she ends up supporting those things in every other aspect of the narrative that isn't a direct intentional allegory for those things and half the time also when it is!
like idk i read the books the first time when i was 10 or so and even then i was like. "hey why is slave labor glamorized in this kid's book i'm reading? that's kinda fucked up!" or like "it's kinda weird that sometimes the Good Guys do fucked up stuff but it's fine because they're Good, isn't doing a bad thing still bad if you're on the good side?" or "why are characters being fat treated as something that makes them a Bad Person / a signifier that they are Bad People" or again: Why is there slavery in the wizard books! why is it rationalized with "they like being slaves" and "they're sad if they can't be slaves!" or "tricking them into not being slaves would be more cruel than enslaving them in the first place" (<- real thing that was on the pottermore website !)
side note, but why was jkr trynig to talk about things like slavery and racism and blood purity and nazi ideology in a fantasy series meant for children anyway. that feels.. incredibly unnecessary and weird. <- leaving this in for transparency but someone sent me an ask that made me rethink this & i do think it's important for those subjects to be addressed in fiction, even fiction meant for children, as they're already experiencing those things & sheltering them does them a disservice. jkr approached it very badly and the story would have been better off without her attempt at exploring it but in general it's not a bad things to address those things in fiction
and not to mention the way most of the characters who weren't white and british were stereotypical caricatures and even their fucking names-- kingsely shacklebolt, anthony goldstein, and cho chang come to mind-- that speaks for itself, really
and the antisemitism that's present through all of the books. the blood purity and the fucking goblins.. jkr why are your goblins identical to antisemitic caricatures and why do they run the underground banks, answer quick and then kill yourself please! like maybe it wasn't intentional but it's still incredibly fucked up and to my knowledge she hasn't spoken about it or apologized at all.
and that's not even to mention the transphobia. which is only slightly present in the books (Bad People who are women are depicted with masculine traits fairly frequently) but as we all know jkr is a raging transphobe with far too much influence over trans legislation in britain and believes everyone who supports her work supports her transphobia. also she allies with far-right activists and people who ally with the far-right far too frequently like literally any of that should cause people to want to drop her and harry potter in general
though even if that weren't a factor at all. personally i wouldn't want to support or engage with hp at all because of All The Racism. and fatphobia and abuse apologism and ableism and misogyny and antisemitism and homophobia and queer baiting and Oh Yeah, the racism again! like i'm embarassed to have ever been a fan of it and supported it like genuinely idk why i was comfortable engaging with it despite All Of That. granted i didnt pick up on everything when i was 10-12 but even the stuff i did understand as a kid was gross and i wish i'd stopped reading it and engaging with it the second i realized that
sorry for writing an entire essay there is a lot to hate abt that damn series !and merry christmas LOL may you never have to hear about hp ever again 🙏
(ID: two dark red banners with black text meant to look like it's dripping. the first reads "harry potter fans fuck off" and the second reads "ter-fs fuck off too". end ID)
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