Everyone’s pointing out the “slaves like being slaves, actually” messaging of the books, which…fair. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Extremely intelligent magical creatures like goblins and centaurs are treated pretty explicitly as second-class citizens. The Wizarding World is an apartheid state, and this is only barely given mention in the series.
There’s fatphobia and some very essentialist language, describing characters like Dudley as piggy.
There’s the much-discussed antisemitic tropes inherent in the way the greedy banker goblins are portrayed.
It has an insanely strong attribution bias. The exact same behaviour or physical attribute can be endearing or evil depending on how much Rowling herself likes the character. It’s why the incredibly creepy incel behaviour of Snape is ultimately portrayed as a positive because he did it in the name of the one-sided obsession that he (and Rowling) called love. It’s why Dudley’s fatness makes him a pig but Molly’s is warm and loving. Some degree of this is, in fairness, to be expected in a children’s series. But it doesn’t lessen as the books age up with their audience, and I think it’s harder to excuse with the behaviours than it is with the physical descriptions (which are, to be fair, from Harry’s PoV).
There’s one of like two black characters being named “Shacklebolt”, the one east Asian character being “Cho Chang”, and the Irish one being the one with a penchant for blowing things up.
Despite one of the strongest themes many of the books most ardent readers got out of the series being about self-acceptance for who you are, we get a fair few examples where people are made fun of for who they are, or are forced to change to fit in by the end of the story. Filch is a stand-in for squibs as a whole in this regard, and is not viewed with much respect. Tonks had strong queer/trans parallels, until at the end she decides to lean fully into her cishet femininity in order to win over a man.
But perhaps most importantly, our protagonist, and through him the narrative as a whole, only ever views things through an extremely liberal lens. The problem is the big bad evil wizard, and the single lazy incompetent Minister than enables him. It’s not a system of oppression and compliance, that starts from when children are sorted into “smart, brave, evil, or the leftovers” at age 11. It frames things as a world where leadership by the Good People like himself or Dumbledore must be a good thing, but if the Bad People are in charge, like the Malfoys or Voldemort, they are the problem. In the end, despite having been screwed over numerous times by the institutions of the magical world, Harry himself becomes a literal magic-world police officer.
And that’s without even getting in to the extended universe. Stuff like the entire continent of Africa having just one school despite the enormous range of languages and cultures. Or one in the Americas having a Latin name despite ostensibly having been founded before European contact. Just generally signs that Rowling really doesn’t care enough about cultural sensitivity to think through her worldbuilding.
Everyone’s pointing out the “slaves like being slaves, actually” messaging of the books, which…fair. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Extremely intelligent magical creatures like goblins and centaurs are treated pretty explicitly as second-class citizens. The Wizarding World is an apartheid state, and this is only barely given mention in the series.
There’s fatphobia and some very essentialist language, describing characters like Dudley as piggy.
There’s the much-discussed antisemitic tropes inherent in the way the greedy banker goblins are portrayed.
It has an insanely strong attribution bias. The exact same behaviour or physical attribute can be endearing or evil depending on how much Rowling herself likes the character. It’s why the incredibly creepy incel behaviour of Snape is ultimately portrayed as a positive because he did it in the name of the one-sided obsession that he (and Rowling) called love. It’s why Dudley’s fatness makes him a pig but Molly’s is warm and loving. Some degree of this is, in fairness, to be expected in a children’s series. But it doesn’t lessen as the books age up with their audience, and I think it’s harder to excuse with the behaviours than it is with the physical descriptions (which are, to be fair, from Harry’s PoV).
There’s one of like two black characters being named “Shacklebolt”, the one east Asian character being “Cho Chang”, and the Irish one being the one with a penchant for blowing things up.
Despite one of the strongest themes many of the books most ardent readers got out of the series being about self-acceptance for who you are, we get a fair few examples where people are made fun of for who they are, or are forced to change to fit in by the end of the story. Filch is a stand-in for squibs as a whole in this regard, and is not viewed with much respect. Tonks had strong queer/trans parallels, until at the end she decides to lean fully into her cishet femininity in order to win over a man.
But perhaps most importantly, our protagonist, and through him the narrative as a whole, only ever views things through an extremely liberal lens. The problem is the big bad evil wizard, and the single lazy incompetent Minister than enables him. It’s not a system of oppression and compliance, that starts from when children are sorted into “smart, brave, evil, or the leftovers” at age 11. It frames things as a world where leadership by the Good People like himself or Dumbledore must be a good thing, but if the Bad People are in charge, like the Malfoys or Voldemort, they are the problem. In the end, despite having been screwed over numerous times by the institutions of the magical world, Harry himself becomes a literal magic-world police officer.
And that’s without even getting in to the extended universe. Stuff like the entire continent of Africa having just one school despite the enormous range of languages and cultures. Or one in the Americas having a Latin name despite ostensibly having been founded before European contact. Just generally signs that Rowling really doesn’t care enough about cultural sensitivity to think through her worldbuilding.