The new chapter is spectacular fiction, but I’m not sure it’s true that bigots are necessarily low-grade people, though it’s possible that they are, on the average. Is there research available?
Henry Ford and Richard Wagner had notable accomplishments, and were also energetic anti-Semites.
Portraying bigotry as low-status is tactically useful, both in the story and in the real world, but has an interesting blow-back—it means that pointing out someone else’s bigotry becomes a threat to lower their status. (This didn’t come up in the story because Draco hasn’t been in those discussions.)
In the real world, people of all sorts of status levels are active bigots—that’s why prejudicial laws can be passed and enforced.
This doesn’t deny the idea that bigoted groups will tend to drive away lively-minded and benevolent people, but there’s a difference between a trend and an absolute.
I’m not sure it’s true that bigots are necessarily low-grade people
I read the chapter much more narrowly as saying that racist people are low-status. Racism is now reviled in Britain (or at least the U.S., and I’ll guess also Britain) to such a degree that anybody openly espousing racist views (at least based on skin colour rather than, say, immigration status) is automatically looked down upon. Other forms of bigotry don’t usually have this effect, nor did racism until fairly recently.
However, we are looking more at racism in the 1940s (at least by the standards of the U.S.) than the 1990s. Judging from To Kill a Mockingbird (which is the only documentary evidence that I have onhand, sorry), extreme overt racism along the lines of using words like ‘Nigger’ (analogue of ‘Mudblood’) was still looked down upon and associated (rightly or wrongly) with low class. But that’s just because moderate and subtle racism was the norm. This is how it works in the Wizarding world too.
The new chapter is spectacular fiction, but I’m not sure it’s true that bigots are necessarily low-grade people, though it’s possible that they are, on the average. Is there research available?
Henry Ford and Richard Wagner had notable accomplishments, and were also energetic anti-Semites.
Portraying bigotry as low-status is tactically useful, both in the story and in the real world, but has an interesting blow-back—it means that pointing out someone else’s bigotry becomes a threat to lower their status. (This didn’t come up in the story because Draco hasn’t been in those discussions.)
In the real world, people of all sorts of status levels are active bigots—that’s why prejudicial laws can be passed and enforced.
This doesn’t deny the idea that bigoted groups will tend to drive away lively-minded and benevolent people, but there’s a difference between a trend and an absolute.
I read the chapter much more narrowly as saying that racist people are low-status. Racism is now reviled in Britain (or at least the U.S., and I’ll guess also Britain) to such a degree that anybody openly espousing racist views (at least based on skin colour rather than, say, immigration status) is automatically looked down upon. Other forms of bigotry don’t usually have this effect, nor did racism until fairly recently.
However, we are looking more at racism in the 1940s (at least by the standards of the U.S.) than the 1990s. Judging from To Kill a Mockingbird (which is the only documentary evidence that I have onhand, sorry), extreme overt racism along the lines of using words like ‘Nigger’ (analogue of ‘Mudblood’) was still looked down upon and associated (rightly or wrongly) with low class. But that’s just because moderate and subtle racism was the norm. This is how it works in the Wizarding world too.