tumblhurgoyf:

flavoracle:

lethal-cuddles: “The goblins in Harry Potter are a jewish stereotype because they have long noses and are greedy”

I mean… I’ve never once looked at them and thought “yep, they’re definitely jewish coded”. Probably because I’m not a fucking nazi. Sure, but it’s not about what YOU see. That’s not the point. I didn’t think anything of the way Gringotts goblins were dipicted either when I first saw them. But that doesn’t matter because it’s not my trauma that’s at stake here. Because the fact is that for years, Jews have been reduced to malicious charicatures and stereotypes that DO resemble the way Gringotts goblins look and behave. And for individuals who have lived through the trauma of seeing themselves depicted that way, it IS a big deal to see that in a movie theater. And to be clear, the effects of that trauma are the same whether the resemblance to the charicature was intentional or not. So instead of turning the narrative to “only Nazis and racists would notice something like this,” how about something like, “Hey that really stinks that something I love makes other people feel uncomfortable and hurt. I’ll try to be more aware of this so I can recognize it and be more sensitive in the future.”

Hurtful stereotypes and caricatures are also insidious in that they subtly reinforce those negative ideas without easily being called out as blatant racism or antisemitism unless you know to look for that stuff. And then when they are, you get stuff like this where people don’t want to acknowledge a bad part of their favorite media This isn’t to say that people will see Gringotts goblins and develop antisemitic beliefs. Seeing the goblins in Harry Potter won’t make you a nazi, but it’s another tiny cut against Jewish people. And the more those tiny cuts happen, the more dangerous they become. Which is why they need to be called out, to stop, and why we need to listen to Jewish people when they tell us about this sort of thing.

There’s also a centuries long history of harmful Jewish stereotypes in media that have coded bad guys and greedy bankers. Those tiny cuts have been happening for a really long time. So much so that those traits are now often synonymous with the roles of bad guys or greedy sorts. It’s absolutely possible that especially younger viewers could watch this sort of thing and accept it as harmless coding of greedy people or villains. Does that mean it is actually harmless? Of course not. Those stereotypes can never be divorced from their connection to a history of antisemitism and genocide. And that’s precisely why we shouldn’t use them casually in our media as if they have no connection to a painful lived history and desensitize us to antisemitic propaganda. That’s especially why we shouldn’t have imagery that would be appropriate for a white power poster in children’s media.