I don't get the feeling JKR was claiming to have represented a Black character with Hermione, more that she was saying, "Hey, it's possible, it doesn't actually contradict anything I said, and it's cool - go for it!" Which is kind of how I feel about it too.
In the books she deals with discrimination and bigotry by side-stepping most of the forms of it we see in our Muggle world - racism, religion, homophobia, even really blatant sexism just aren't shown in the wizarding world, and we see other kinds of discrimination instead - so the concept of bigotry is dealt with by analogy, for better or worse. (Though the Malfoys' sneers at the Weasleys for being poor and having many children seem to show classism at work.) Kids will probably identify with coming into the wizarding world from the muggle world, so they will see the blood purity obsession as bad.
The idea that werewolves represent people with AIDS is much more problematic, to me. Werewolves that don't get their wolfbane potion lose their human consciousness during the full moon and attack people. That is not what people with AIDS do.
She's just one person and she invented a huge world and I don't fault her for not thinking of everything. That's where the rest of us come in!
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Date: 2015-12-22 05:43 am (UTC)I don't get the feeling JKR was claiming to have represented a Black character with Hermione, more that she was saying, "Hey, it's possible, it doesn't actually contradict anything I said, and it's cool - go for it!" Which is kind of how I feel about it too.
In the books she deals with discrimination and bigotry by side-stepping most of the forms of it we see in our Muggle world - racism, religion, homophobia, even really blatant sexism just aren't shown in the wizarding world, and we see other kinds of discrimination instead - so the concept of bigotry is dealt with by analogy, for better or worse. (Though the Malfoys' sneers at the Weasleys for being poor and having many children seem to show classism at work.) Kids will probably identify with coming into the wizarding world from the muggle world, so they will see the blood purity obsession as bad.
The idea that werewolves represent people with AIDS is much more problematic, to me. Werewolves that don't get their wolfbane potion lose their human consciousness during the full moon and attack people. That is not what people with AIDS do.
She's just one person and she invented a huge world and I don't fault her for not thinking of everything. That's where the rest of us come in!