Can You Be Racist to a Goblin? Yes, Yes You Can.
In The Harry Potter series, there are a multitude of other races that live alongside humans. While there are, of course, humans of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, in this case I’m referring to species that have the sentience of humans (or something that’s quite close) while quite literally not being human. There are many examples of this in the Harry Potter series including house elves, giants, centaurs, and goblins. I believe that these beings are unfairly subjugated by human laws and that their treatment in the books is meant to be an allegory to how humans subjugate other humans.
In the reading Harry and the Other: Answering the Race Question in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Jackie C. Horne focuses on two of the other magical races in the Harry Potter universe: house elves and goblins. Goblins in particular are a good illustration of how humans treat another race poorly. Humans hold stereotypes about Goblins that paint them as untrustworthy and sneaky, as illustrated in the reading when the Weasley twins thought that goblins refusing to pay Ludo Bagman because they were “insisting that Harry didn’t win outright, because he tied with Cedric … makes the goblins as poor keepers of their word as Ludo Bagman [himself], who refused to pay Fred and George after losing a bet at the Wizarding World Cup (pg. 91).” Wizards who keep company with goblins are also viewed as suspect, which shows how that goblins are associated with bad things. It’s odd that goblins are seen as untrustworthy and sneaky but also trusted to run what appears to run the major financial institution of the U.K. Wizarding World. I think you can draw a direct parallel to how Jewish people have been seen throughout history. Even today, people have stereotypes about Jewish people and money. While I’m not arguing that the goblins are meant to be read as Jewish people, I do think that the way goblins are treated by the wizarding world is similar to how Jewish people have been treated by other humans, especially those of the Christian faith.
Goblins are also subjugated by law. On page 92, Horne states that “the oppression goblins experience at the hands of the wizards is not just personal, stemming from the actions of a few bad wizards, but institutional.” She goes on to talk about Griphook’s frustration about how, according to wizarding law, goblins are not allowed to use wands. Ron argues with Griphook about this, stating that since goblins can use magic without a wand, there is no reason to allow goblins to have wands. This makes Griphook angry, because he believes that wands could help goblins advance further as a species. This institutionalized racism can be seen in many places around the world. The dominant group of humans uses rules and laws to subjugate another group of humans, and then makes excuses as to why those rules are “fair”. A great example of this is Jim Crow laws in the Southern Unites States. People argued that “separate but equal” was fair to every party and therefore okay to continue enforcing.
The importance of understanding cultural relativism is also illustrated with Griphook over Gryffindor’s sword. As quoted in the reading from the seventh Harry Potter book “To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser …they have great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard [and] consider it little more than theft (pg. 94).” This quote from Bill Weasley shows that there is sometimes little cultural understanding between wizards and goblins. Wizards, of course, think that buying something from someone makes the purchaser the owner of an object. Disagreements like this happen between different human cultures all the time, like in the case of Native Americans. They often had a different idea of what “selling” lands to the Europeans meant, which caused a lot of conflict because the Native Americans didn’t realize they were giving up their lands forever by selling them. The definition of what something is or is not is, of course, set by the dominant group, so if the subjugated group doesn’t agree with a definition, it often doesn’t really matter.
In the Harry Potter universe, different magical species are subjugated by the wizarding population. I believe that one can draw parallels between how these beings are dealt with and how humans sometimes treat other humans in the real world.
I really liked your reading of this! Bringing in real world examples of things Rowling put in the books was excellent. You may want to expand on the idea of the Jewish stereotype if you would like to go that direction. It’s an interesting thought, but it really does kind of work.
One other thing you might want to discuss is the Ministry of Magic enforcing this kind of racism. I’m not sure if the goblins are featured in their fountain or not, but the other magical creatures you discussed in the beginning were.
Hi, Kylie!
I’ll keep my comments separated by paragraph so it’s easier to refer back to points that I’m talking about.
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Paragraph One
I definitely like the premise for your journal based on the first paragraph, and your thesis is really strong!
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Paragraph Two
I think the reading title should be in quotation marks and not italics, since it looks like it was a part of a bigger publication, but I’m not positive on that. You change the capitalization of goblins on and off – I’m not one hundred percent sure if it should be capitalized or lowercase, so I’ll let you make the judgment call on that one. Your citation doesn’t need the “pg.” abbreviation in it, simply putting the page number in parentheses will suffice! Also, the citation for the page number should be outside of the quotes, so it would look like this:
“insisting that Harry didn’t win outright, because he tied with Cedric … makes the goblins as poor keepers of their word as Ludo Bagman [himself], who refused to pay Fred and George after losing a bet at the Wizarding World Cup” (91).
All of this is according to Purdue OWL on MLA formatting:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/
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Paragraph Three
I don’t think that it’s a common practice to mention the page number before the quotation, so simply starting the sentence with Horne states that, and putting the citation at the end is the best way to go. The same rules with the last citation apply here as well, so the citation goes outside of the quotation marks, with the punctuation after it.
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Paragraph Four
Just to round out the citation comments, you can remove the “pg.” from your citation, and then all you have to do is move the citation itself outside of the quotation marks.
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Paragraph Five
While I think your journal is great in regard to discussing goblins compared to humans in the magical world, it does not really discuss other magical creatures, so I think you may want to change your thesis and conclusion slightly to put more emphasis on goblins, and less emphasis on the examples of other subjugated creatures such as house elves or centaurs.
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Those are all of the comments I had for now, but if you have any questions feel free to leave them in a reply to this! c:
Very interesting read.
You have a solid argument and thesis that are strongly supported.
My only comment would be to explain why it is important for us to understand this. You mention it a bit, but go even further. Does J.K. Rowling talk about this subject in interviews or other articles? Did she have a specific reason to include this in the book? Or do we see this in other fantasy stories?
Hi Kylie,
I really liked what you had to say! There is definitely a parallel from the Wizarding World’s stance on “racism” to our world. You touched upon the other creatures that were discriminated against, maybe talk a little more about that? House elves in comparison to slaves? It’s a good journal though and I like where you were going with it!
Paragraph 1-
Strong intro, but make it a little more concise.
Paragraph 2-
Sentence ” Wizards who keep company with goblins are also viewed as suspect, which shows how that goblins are associated with bad things.” watch your wording. it is a little confusing in this sentence.
You start making a point about Goblins being treated similarly to Jews in history. Maybe go a little more in depth with that. The thought doesn’t seem finished.
Overall, I really like your argument! You have a strong thesis and good supports. Just be sure to make sure your points are fully explicated and your sentences run smoothly. Great job!!
-Gabby
Hi Kylie!
Beautifully argued paper with a meaningful topic being addressed. I really have few suggestions, Katherine made an interesting point about why it matters and if you think J.K. Rowling did this and drew these parallels on purpose. Aside from that, great journal!