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To: alt.lucky.w,alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca From: Catherine YronwodeSubject: Re: "Occult power?" (was Re: Listen-up a.r.w!) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 21:12:12 GMT > > "THE Cast Iron Bitch" wrote > > > Ms. Rowling pegged it when she made up the term "Muggle". > > "Tom" wrote > > Yes, a prejorative term used to describe people unlike oneself. Like > > "wog", "nigger", and "_outsider_". However, fictional Harry and his > > friends had amazing magical powers that were obvious even to "muggles". > > Do you or are yours as fictional as Rowling's characters? Jani wrote: > Interesting way of defining 'muggle'. The other examples you cite are of > minority cultures within a majority, but Rowling's use of 'muggle' > describes a majority culture. Actually, Jani, Tom's examples of pejorative terms do not refer to minority populations. The term "wog" (short for Worthy Oriental Gentleman) does not describe a minority culture -- it was a term the British used to derisively describe the majority inhabitants of the colonies they ruled. Likewise "nigger" (from the Latin word for "black") was used not only to describe the enslaved African population in the Americas -- not always a minority in any given region, by the way -- but was also used to describe the inhabitants of the entire continent of Africa, where dark skinned people are the majority, And, of course, "outsider" means just that -- someone outside of one's cultural group -- without reference to numeric quantity. Rowling's "muggles" is interesting on another count, though; it is a common African-American word for marijuana. (For instance, the great jazz trumpeter Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong and the famous jazz pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines [father of the actor Gregory Hines] recorded a wonderful and justly famous jazz piece called Muggles.) An excellent history of the word "muggles" is found at this web page: http://www.ashleyrichards.com/articles/HarryPotter-V-LarryPotter.shtml cat yronwode Hoodoo and Blues Lyrics --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/blues.html
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