Summary: Thoughts after reading this to my children.
I am not going to do a full review of this, but I do want to note a couple of things. I have read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at least four times previously. But you always see a book with new eyes when you are reading it to children. I read this out loud to my 6 and 8-year-old. This was their first real contact with Harry Potter and we watched the movie after the book was finished. I do like the broader stories and I am a big fan of children’s fantasy literature. But there are problems with the books.
Rowling regularly makes fun of or demeans fat people. There is a lot of examples of words like dumb, stupid, ignorant, etc. I modified or skipped a number of them when reading. It is not that I am opposed to all language like this, there is a time and place, but most often these words are used to reduce people as less than. Part of what I try to communicate to my children is that we should not be harming people with our words and I do not want to encourage my children to see others do it.
Another thought is the concept of mixed blood and pure-blood wizards. While it is developed more in later books, it is introduced here. Rowling does condemn it, but I also think the history of these ideas should be explored if she is going to bring it up. I was just reading Stand Your Ground by Kelly Douglas Brown and she explores the history of racial/ethnic purity in the English common law system and culture and there is a lot of problems with it. In Harry Potter, I think the purity of blood is being associated with a WWII German concept but there is a much wider conversation than that.
Dr. Douglas Brown quotes Benjamin Franklin,
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?
Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionally very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as ar the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? Why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so far an opportunity, by excluding all black and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red?
I don’t need to give my children a dissertation on the problems of the Enlightenment and its promotion of human hierarchies and the development of scientific racism, but I do think that stopping and pointing out some of the histories and not just placing the blame on others, but absorbing the reality that many of our historical heroes agreed and promoted similar ideas is important. Even in fiction, or maybe especially in fiction, we need to help children understand the ways that ideas can lead to action or actions can lead to ideas that harm.
Part of why I am connecting Harry Potter to this long quote by Franklin is that my 1st grader has recently studied Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. My son was sick and home for several days and the teacher sent home a biography of Thomas Jefferson for us to read and my son to write about. Thomas Jefferson was a planter and farmer in the book, but there was no mention of slavery. Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Purchase, but there was no mention of Native Americans that were already on the land, or the Trail of Tears, which started in our area. A marker for the first Cherokee man killed is in a bank parking lot a few miles from our home. Similarly, my son was taught about Benjamin Franklin as an inventor and abolitionist, but the above quote or kid-appropriate presentation of the ideas above was not discussed. I know that it is hard to do that well and I am not blaming my son’s teacher. She is teaching the curriculum as intended and probably doing more than many others to nuance history. But more needs to be done.
As a Christian, I am not opposed to Harry Potter because of magic. And as someone that is concerned about justice, I am not going to prevent my kids from interacting with Harry Potter only because of the concerns I have with justice within the series. But I am going to regularly stop and discuss the ideas and problems, even if there are times when I just skip words so that I don’t have to discuss every idea all the time. We start the second book tonight.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook
Really good analysis.
I wonder if we are doing our children a favor by “protecting” them from our ugly past and its manifestations in the present. I know that we want to keep our children safe, but so many children have suffered needlessly because of decisions and policies made in the past that continue to our present.
If those children are forced to go through the experience of minority presence in a majority-dominated world, it might be useful to allow children to see more of the world around them. Not to traumatize them. But to help educate them (draw them out) to connect with others and develop empathy.
Not at all saying you aren’t doing this. Just thinking aloud about the educational standards we have for the children of the majority culture & the way we so desperately attempt to whitewash who we are and where we come from.