The World Building in Fantastic Beasts is Completely Broken 

Also worth pointing out: Transatlantic Slave Trading started at least as early as the 1480's. International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy enacted 1692. So for the first two centuries, there would have been no need for magical Africans to conceal their resistance to being pressed into slavery.

Everything falls apart when you look at the grander picture and when the other schools where released I couldn't not see how euoro- (not to say brit-) centric it was. Asia and Africa has one school each?? Are 11yo students from all of asia going to japan? just India has an old and diverse culture very differnet from the school (did they even see themself as a united country before colonialismen?). One of Rowlings explonations to so few schools was "wizards prefer to homeschool their kids", which raises it's own questions, 'cause really?!? Lone individuals I can see but all of the magic society over the globe?That must be the most inefective educationsystem ever in a hundreds of different ways

What I wondered about was Squibs. If they chose to leave the wizarding world, would they be required to have their memories of it erased? As children of wizards, I kind of viewed them as carriers for the magical gene. They could explain how muggleborn wizards exist.

Is it terrible when you said "Kill Andrew Jackson with Magic" I pictured that phrase being lovingly cross-stitched into a sampler?

The issue with Harry Potter world building is it started out as a children's story so the world building was designed to be whimsical and not necessarily be something that would actually be possible (even within the universe's own rules). That's fine when the story is designed for 12 year olds. The reason for that is even though you'll have weird instances (like why would muggle born native Americans not use magic to kill European settlers) nobody really cares because the logical response to that question would be "dude, this is a book designed for 12 year olds. Who gives a shit?" Rowling decided to make her universe age with the reader. That works for some stories if you do it correctly. For example, The Hobbit is designed for kids and LOTR is designed for an older audience. Tolkien was able to make little twists to the world to make it stay consistent while feeling darker. However, Rowling never made little twists to her universe to make it actually make sense for older audiences. So your left with this one messy world where each book has slightly different rules than the one before it (IE: The Time Turner doesn't make any sense. It's fine because it's a kid's story. However, when a young adult is reading Deathly Hallows it becomes a plot hole).

I think that the problem is that the wizard population is ballooned out of control. In the first couple HP books, it's explained that there are very few full-blooded wizarding families and that there are very few muggleborns in relation to the whole population (wizard and muggle). Which means that if there is only one witch born for every 500 muggles or more, it makes more sense that they would not be able to over throw the government. But by the time you get to Fantastic Beasts, there are literally thousands of wizards in New York, making it a sizable population. And frankly, the magic is OP. Like before Harry graduated from Hogwarts he could blow up like an entire shack then repair it easily. For books that have secret wizards in modern society, I like the Dresden files because I feel it is realistic. Just looking at the wizard counsel, the racial injustices are actually addressed and are shown to cause tension and effect their politics. And in modern times it isn't so much 'we need to keep non-magical people from finding us' as much as it is "ok Jerry, go tell everyone in marketing you saw someone transform into a wolf. I'm sure everyone will believe you and you won't look insane at all" The magic is also a little less OP, since really being able to control magic takes years of mental discipline and it has some pretty hefty limitations. Like how using dark magic will warp your brain because using magic at all warps your brain a little. Finding out you can solve your friend's drug addiction by magically drilling into their brain to fix it means you're going to default to doing that kind of thing again.

I feel like JKR was pushed into a corner to write global content when she originally intended to keep the global stuff vague. Whether to give fans what they want or as a cynical moneygrab I don't know. But people were really clamouring for US content and it's unsurprisingly poorly thought out. I actually think a combo of protecting muggleborns direct families in exchange for secrecy and laws saying you couldn't interfere with muggle issues solves most of the problems you state with slavery in the video. However native American wizards are a harder problem because they clearly had powerful wizards openly in the community. On the other hand I think it would've been worse to leave native americans out of a history of US magic. So I think JKR did her best given the circumstances.

It doesn't fall apart at the point where you think about muggle-born kids that grew up in societies that are maltreated or destroyed by the US in recent history. It does so much sooner: Even in the ancient world, would wizards of Rome and Carthage be like 'let's hide and not do something about this war that threatens to wipe out one of our civilisations'? How many ethnicities and cultures have been killed off during our human history? How many wars have been fought were a wizard could have easily helped save countless lifes on his side? The whole concept relies on wizards isolating themselves almost completely from the 'muggles' and the muggle world. Is that really realistic? When should this have begun? If we take a look into our history books, that was at least a few thousand years back and in all parts of the then-known-world. And why would somebody do that? Do wizards not feel part of their ethnicity or culture? Do they not seek validation, fame, power? The stories don't indicate that at all - and therefore it is simply ridiculous that (even if at some point there had been a global agreement to seperate from muggles) a lot of wizards hadn't acted against that. Actually there is about zero valid reason to hide from the world (aside from meta-reasons) and all the reasons not to. The witch-hunts and similar practices in all over the world are only a thing because there are no wizards, if there were, they would be a) too powerful b) too integrated and c) too valuable to society to hunt them. They are in essence just superior humans, far superior. In every past society they would easily rise to the highest offices and form the nobility of mankind. Ostracised or victimised? Don't make me laugh, that would be what wizards would do. The idea works for a children's story. It doesn't hold up to real scrutiny and it doesn't translate well into any more grown-up versions of itself ...

It would honestly be so easy to fix these kinds of problems if they ever mentioned that the architects of things like the slave trade had magic on their side, too, which served to suppress or otherwise stop magical revolts by the people they oppressed. It wouldn't 100% take care of every flaw, but it would at least be halfway believable, and it would allow for the wizarding community to not come off as evil if they were working to stop these kinds of people while struggling not to blow their cover.

One time I was in a woodwork class talking about random HP stuff when my friend asked: “So Voldemort split his soul so he couldn’t die, right?” “Yeah” “Does that mean that he could still *physically* age? Or would he kinda stay the same?” “Damn... good question... well... he separated his *soul* , which (in HP isn’t really part of the body itself) so he probably couldn’t die BUT he would *physically* age until he wouldn’t be able to raise his f****** finger- (Insert the rest of my rant here which had better explanation but can’t remember) We then had fun imagining Moldy Shorts trying to rule the wizarding world as a literal husk

This is all so true. It’s very sloppily done. Plus the fact that the US only has one school. Yeah right.

Thank you for this, now I have an easy reference to give people on why the world-building, especially in Beasts, is just so bad. I mean, you could have theoretically said that witches and wizards NEED wands and that those who don't have them just can't access their magic after a certain age. That at least takes care of the slavery issue if you say that Magical America only recently started training muggleborns (and would actually make the whole no-maj+magical=interracial marriage thing work and resonate better). It doesn't fix the First Nations situations but hey, at least it would make the whole wands=guns thing she stepped into actually work to a certain extent (ie, the settlers are united on their magical axis while the First Nations fall into those nations first, magic second). But, nope, you basically made the entire first Beasts movies about what happens when magical kids aren't taught and actively suppress their magical abilities and they're arguably the most powerful magic users out there, they just can't control it. But yeah, seriously, JKR should have hired some American and First Nation super fans to edit and rework her ideas. Not like she can't afford it. Tangent here, but Pottermore is actively awful in some areas. Like, things get posted that break the canon of the books and make it all worse. Like, apparently the Fidelius Charm's information can only be given out willingly? Which makes the entire third book make no sense? Because Sirius was worried about being tortured or Imperiused for the Potter's location and so they switched to a secret Secret Keeper? Only why would Sirius be worried about it and switch if he knew that it only works on willingly given? Like, he said that he would have died before betraying his friends and that alone should be enough to keep the secret, according to Pottermore. Just...why?

Great video! Adding to the list of things she obviously didn't research: everything she wrote in pottermore about the brazilian school. It's honestly laughable and doesn't make any sense

I don't understand why it would be wrong to assume that the magical community was complicit in racism, slavery, the Holocaust etc. The magical community is its own community analogous to our "muggle world" with its own prejudices, bad and good people in it, historical atrocities, wars etc. So why would it be particularly dark to assume that there were magical folk involved in all the other atrocities of human history too? I mean sure, it would be dark, but just as dark as the history of humanity in general. Why should it be any different for the magical community? They're equally human, and not some sort of angelic creatures, I mean the whole HP series is pretty much about that, isn't it? But still, there are many ways in which isolated magical people could have been able to deal with things like that. I mean first and forememost, the magical community is seperated from the muggle community with their own habits, cultures, histories etc. So why would you assume that for example Afro-American people could just be subsumed under that one category instead of muggle Afro-American people and wizard Afro-American people with their own separate identities, cultures etc.? Sure, there would have been intersections, struggles, but due to both the number of wizards (which I suppose is meant to be small compared to muggles, and even smaller for actual muggle-borns) and their different ways of lives, maybe it just would not have been effective enough to really change anything significantly? If for example a wizard is born into a family of muggle slaves, there are numerous ways one can think of how the magical community might have dealt with that: I think someone else wrote in the comments they could have rescued the families and used memory charms on the slave owners. Since the magical community would have been concerned with their own safety and secrecy due to threat of being oppressed by the muggle community, maybe there were also single isolated treaties between muggles and wizards allowing for muggle born wizards born into slave families to be freed to prevent further conflicts all the while the wizard community would have to be complicit otherwise in order to not risk their own safety/secrecy and/or because they were simply not big enough numberwise to do anything about it. It's not that hard to see that seeing it was pretty much similar in our own history, with the divide between the north and the south in the US concerning slavery, certain former slaves been able to escape into freedom, fighting for the abolition of slavery, and even then it still was not possible to simply abolish slavery and required a long intellectual/social struggle and war. So if there was a whole abolishionist movement with former slaves and white allys and the abolition of slavery was a struggle even like so, why would you assume that all of a sudden history would have been completely different and slavery never could have happened that way simply because there were SOME black wizards?? All the while having to assume that the culture among wizards and muggles was equally complicated, intersecting etc. as our very own culture? Who knows, maybe white wizards were just equally racist and didn't care about wizards born into muggle slave families. Maybe there were even wizards being "racist" against muggles (the likes of Grindlewald and Voldemort supporters) and in connection/intersection with that also racist against black people in some sort of hierarchical racist "ladder", regarding black muggles and muggle-borns as the worst while still granting some rights to black wizards or something like that. Pretty much the way it is in our society too, with for example white women being regarded as inferior to men but still being seen as superior in relation to black women or even men. As for Native Americans, I am not all too familiar with the history so I don't want to say anything wrong, but here again, Ithink one can think of a lot of different reasons why history was what it was even in the HP universe. One often subsumes Native Americans under one single group, but actually they were a diverse group of hundreds of different tribes with their own cultures, ways of life, histories, myths and stories etc., so what speaks against imagining even various different and independent magical native communities (and yes I am aware that the way Rowling has dealt with this issue is not correct or particularly well thought-out). And even among native peoples of the Americas, as far as I know at least, history was far more complicated than simply whites vs. natives in that simplistic manner, but native groups had to be complicit in certain things with white people and also had inner-native conflicts between different tribes because well, of course they werenot all the same and got along well with one another just because they were native, I mean that "category" is pretty much an invention by white colonialists. And it was not simply that one big conflict or war between natives and whites, but a complicated history with a lot of different smaller and also intersecting conflicts. And if one criticizes Rowling (rightfully so) for disregarding that cutlural diversity, why would one use the same simplistic notions when arguing about the complexities of muggle and wizard relations among native Americans? Who says for example that before the colonialists arrived in the Americas, that wizard and muggle native people were very closely connected to one another in the first place? Maybe there were similar conflicts and there was already a separation between wizards and muggles going on there too. And here again, due to the smaller numbers of wizards and in particular muggle-borns I think it is quite easy to imagine scenarios in which wizard revolts would be unsuccesful or maybe not even be attempted in the first place. Or maybe wizard native communities isolated themselves and went into hiding knowing that there was not much they could do, or maybe some of them even didn't want to do anything because they were comfortable the way they lived in hiding and didn't want to risk their own safety. I think it's simply far too simplistic to assume that at each point in history oppressed people are all united under one banner against their oppressors, I mean one can see that in the history of feminism too and for a long time, white women excluded black women from their feminist movement. So why would it be wrong to assume a fictional scenario where it was possible for wizard native communities to gain (some) freedom(s) but not supporting other muggle native communities, for _various_ different reasons one could imagine? But let's imagine maybe a small group of successful revolts, wouldn't it make sense to keep them secret and not let them be part of "mainstream history"? In a world where native peoples or people of color are still oppressed, what use would there be in that? Or even in the past. I mean imagine muggle white people knowing about the existence of real magical native or black folk, would the oppression not even be worse maybe? Maybe magical folk also kept certain things secret in order to prevent even more horrible consequences for their muggle brothers and sisters. I mean all I am trying to say is that the world building is not simply bad in that simplistic manner, there are sitll numerous ways to think about these things that make it all really complicated in my opinion, and it's not simply a black and white issue. That does of course not mean that there is one big solution to all of this and there are not still numerous smaller plot holes/logical holes in all of that, but in my opinion, one simply cannot say that it's just that one big plot hole and that's it.

Even with just European stuff it can make you go "huh?" For context, I've looked into a bit of Polish history because I have Polish ancestry and we quite honestly , my school did not talk a lot about Poland or the European countries east of them. Anyway, Poland literally disappeared from the map for over a century and the culture of ethnic poles was marginalized by the countries the land was partitioned into. So, what would this mean for say ethnically Polish wizards? Poland got its independence back after WWI but were invaded by Germany and attacked by Soviet Russia at the beginning of WWII. After that, The Cold War happened with the patrician of Germany and the Eastern Bloc nations being behind the Iron Curtain. Movement to western Europe was severely restricted. families were separated and people died trying to get over the Berlin Wall. What does this mean if there were witches and wizards? Oh, and Stalin literally moved Poland. He forcibly made Poles and Germans move because he wanted more of a buffer against the west. What does that mean for Wizards living in that region? I ask because if you did not move, you were shot. So the Harry Potter books take place in the 90's and the the government of East Germany only allowed East Germans to freely cross the boarder in November 1989. The disillusionment of soviet union happened officially on December 25th, 1991. Harry Potter started his time at Hogwarts in September 1991. There was a flood of immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc nations to western Europe during that time. Did this not affect European Wizards at all?

I want an alternate history where under-represented groups have the magic to take vengance now

I feel like it would have been believable to have the wizard world and the world of the muggles separated through some unexplained magical barrier before Book 1. Or have the population of the wizards smaller than that of the world we're in. The risk of exposing magic to muggles and the need to keep it secret would have been convincing because they don't have the numbers.

Magic having no effect on history also doesn't make sense at all. What happens when the mundane governments of two countries go to war? Do the magical gov's shrug it off? And what about conflict in the magical world, how does that transpose? They occupy the same world, and if history tells us one thing, conflicts growing by the involvement of nearby powers is inevitable at least some of the time. Someone would try to gain an advantage by involving their respective mundane community.

I've also been wondering about the type of schooling the kids get at hogwarts, like they do history of magic and dark arts and the whole shebang but they never do 'muggle' subjects like maths or science which would surely cause problems in the long run, also does every magic child have to go to a magical school? what if they had their heart set on being a doctor or a writer or something? does the magical world have magic unis which teach advanced magic as well?

I'm in agreement with the theory that muggles are decedents of squibs. European witches and wizards would travel to America, but they wouldn't be Native American. So either Native Americans had their own version of Witches and Wizards who would be pure-bloods, and thus may have their own training system, which is plausible, or there are no native american witches and wizards. Even if a native american was to produce a child with a European Squibb, the time it would take to forget about magic and become a muggle-born would have surpassed the battle with native americans. And two, a witch or wizard would not have allowed themselves to become slaves in the first place. They would probably protect their children too, even if they were Squibbs. And even if a Squibb were to get captured and have children who would eventually produce a witch or wizard, is it so ridiculous to think that they wouldn't be allowed to attend the school? Especially if the witches and wizards shared the beliefs of the non magical about white supremacy? They could probably bound their magic and erase their memory.

I'd imagine that the wizarding community were complicit, and as we saw in the movie, covered magical incidents up. Definitely not a perfect answer, but it would be good enough for me if they just brought it up as a shameful flaw.

I wonder if the situation of Merope Gaunt could be applied to the case of magical abilities in Muggleborn slaves. A large part of Merope's story was that she was abused and constantly derided, leading to her not being the most competent of witches. I feel like that could be applied to the case of Muggleborn witches and wizards born into slavery, though I'm probably reaching quite a bit. With Muggleborns, I wonder if it isn't supposed to resemble the adaptive attitude of some immigrants. I don't know how true it is nowadays, but not long ago many immigrants to countries vastly different from their own would reject their native cultures and languages in order to better fit in with the new society. Muggleborns could be in a similar position where they wanted to adapt to this foreign and intimidating new society as quickly as possible, so they rejected or ignored reminders and connections to the Muggle world. To be honest though, I think the world of Harry Potter kind of fell apart when JK Rowling tried to include the rest of the world. It was mostly fine when it was contained within the UK, but once she started branching out it became too complicated.

An example of a movie that does this concept right: black panther

Really good video, I've never thought about this stuff before!

“I’m not saying she’s an evil racist” Laughs in J.K. Rowling’s TERF rhetoric

JK didn't even bother to explain how USA bars contact with muggles (I refuse to use "no-maj"), and yet has an unusually high muggleborn population; so it's not surprising she didn't realized the implications of this (I have, White Wizards are as bad a white muggles; there's a reason there's only *one* magical school in Africa. Watsonian HP is a treasure trove of storytelling)

Your points make a lot of sense. I never thought about it before.

Carry on by rainbow rowell is basically a published Harry Potter fanfic that fixes all the world building problems you mentioned in this epsode

Thank you for this Video, I think the world building is very sloppy, too. Not only the historical events doesnt make any sense, the separation of magical creatures/plants and normal animals/plants is very strange. If magical animals and plants always existed in our world, wouldnt we think that these are normal animals/plants?

I think that Harry Potter definitely did a better job at this than fantastic beasts. I just saw the second fb film and to be honest, it feels like Rowling wanted to tell two different stories. Everything is rushed and not very clear. I think it would have just been better as a stand alone movie

Her story would've worked if she made it an alternative reality thing in which case she will have full liberty over the history people and even places She should've done that instead of trying this hard just to prove that she didn't fuck up

Also eastern countries worship magic. From China to Balkans.

I always thought the extent wizards went to live "in secret" was ridiculous. Why wouldn't they use the local currency, or dress in the current fashion, or just buy mundane goods from the same stores as non-magical people? It makes no sense and would make them stand out more in a crowd.

I’m a Harry Potter story I’m writing, there’s literally a secret magical organization who have almost omniscient information, using both magic and modern technology, to find and silence all wizards who disobey the Statute

what would make more sense would be if muggle borns were extremely rare and then became more common over time

Thank you for pointing this out... I love Harry Potter. It was a huge part of my child hood but as a person of African descent who thinks about some of these things I found some of the omissions to be huge. In Fantastic Beasts one of the executioners were black. I was taken out of the weight of the scene because all I could think about was if she was forced to segregate when in the no-maj world and how would she feel about it. Were her co-workers aware of her second class status? Like so many questions.

I could think of solutions. 1. Magic was taken away from slaves as soon as they became "active". That would be cruel, but in the realms of possiblity. They could also kill the children and make everyone forget it ever was. 2. The Natives were in a war with old world Magic people. They did help, but not in a Muggle world. I think that we don't know half the horrific things we did to ourselves the last 100 years, let alone a society with endless power that is just starting to feel that slavery might be wrong in the 1990s. If one would write "grown up" Harry potter, I would not be surprised if the Wizard world had skalotons in the closet that would make Jim crow laws look like child's play. I am not here to defend Harry potter, the world would need a major rewrite, but I am not convinced that this criticism is the pain point of it.

(a) How can witches be born from muggles? They are descendants of squibs who reintegrated into muggle society. (B) why didn't the native witches and wizards or Africans witches conquer their Invaders? The population of witches and wizards is very small and while they helped they weren't trained or had wands. Also Don't forget that the colonists probably had witches trained in magic "on their side" as well.

This is deep. I had never looked at it this way before, and you're right; it begs more questions than answers. Is every work of fiction supposed to be historically accurate, though? Granted, no one said that JK couldn't have just stopped at the end of Harry Potter. And people kept asking her question after question about the wizarding world. HER wizarding world. I agree, she has many instances of the wizarding history coincide with actual history. Dumbledore defeating Grindelwald in 1945 coincides with the end of WWII, for instance. I think the real issue with Fantastic Beasts is that she didn't write the book first. Putting pen to paper makes you flesh out things in a way that I don't think screenwriting takes into account. But, I digress. Like I said, this is deep; way too deep for what I think Harry Potter was suppose to be. It was just for entertainment. JK made her own little world, and for lack of imagination or not, had it meld with our own. Well, it more congealed, I suppose...but for lack of a better word. Any whoo...I'm off to watch some more of your videos. I sure hope you're writing a book. I'd like to read it.

Great video!

Started reading the Harry Potter books at the time of there release. I love those books and was somewhat pissed once the movies were release at how it skewed my internal view of the characters to the way the movies portrayed them. I can not remember how my mind viewed Harry Potter before Daniel Radcliffe. For this reason I have not followed any of the pottermore essays or books since.

*Idk why everyone is complaining about the number of wizard schools.* JK more than likely didn't mention many other Wizarding schools because she didn't need to, the story was only going to take place in Europe. It's like doing unnecessary work for something you're not even going to use. She said herself she left a lot of things vague because she just assumed it was common sense. But here are some cannon explanations: 1. Homeschooling is still quite common 2. There are at least 4 Major Wizarding schools in Europe, but Hagrid says Hogwarts is "the best in the country" (indicating there are more yet smaller and unmentioned/unamed schools), and if Europe has that many, it's only logical there are many more in other countries 3. It's quite literally cannon (AND SAID IN THE BOOKS) that Africa is an "encompass to many smaller Wizarding schools" 4. The Wizarding population is a small 5. The south American school accepts students from all over Latin America. They never said they had to go there, I'm pretty sure there were other ones (I mean, if Africa had a lot, I'm sure they did too) 6. The Wizarding world is.... small... to say the least. And I think it said somewhere Europe/Britain had the largest population of wizards. We only ever heard about 1 school in other continents because they were apart of the "Great 11 Wizarding schools", equivalent to the Ivy League colleges list we have (Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, etc). She likely only mentioned those to be like "hey, there are schools in other continents 2". But if Europe and Africa are mentioned to have multiple Wizarding schools, it's pure logic to assume other continents do also. It's just common sense and doesn't need to be questioned. It's like if I list of colleges (Harvard, Stanford, UPenn and Oxford), I listed 3 colleges from America and only 1 from Europe. But it's just dumb to assume there is only 1 college in Europe just because I took the time to only mentioned 1.... *- I don't mean to sound annoying, I just don't like people arguing over misinformation when the problem could literally be solved in 2 seconds if research.* Oh and uhh... sorry for the bad English. English is my 1st language, but I'm shit at it....

I really, really love your videos- they’re well thought-out and you talk about a lot of topics I’m very interested in! However, I have a tiny issue I wanted to bring to your attention- English isn’t my first language, so I have to pause the video to read your little on-screen comments (like at 0:15). However, when I do that while it’s full screen, the title of the video appears on top, making them harder to read. Could you perhaps slightly adjust them so that they’re positioned a tad lower? Hope I’m not too unclear- anyway, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us! ^_^

i dont mean to dismiss any historical implications or to make them seem unimportant, but JKR just wrote books about magic kids going to magic school and fighting evil magic man. I think we can suspend belief for a little and just... enjoy? With that said, your points are all valid and correct. I just personally dont see the point in sweatin it too much

My bugs issue is with the fact both world Wars happened in in the HP world. You are telling me that the nazis and the soviets did not use their magical communities to fight off one another? Did Japanese or Vietnamese use traps to fool American soldiers? If we assume no wizards ever participated in any modern war then that makes ecen less sense for places like Vietnam, Germany or the Soviet Union where fighting directly put civilians at risk

Found your channel today, absolutely LOVE the content youre putting out. Your videos are extremely eloquent, and i love how you go about race and oppression since it feels like a lot of youtubers trying to make it big will avoid mentioning racism in detail (or even the word itself) in their criticism of media or celebrity figures. It makes their content feel very shallow

Also, speaking as a black person, It's not altogether unlikely that European Wizards were the main ones involved in the slave trade and the oppression of Indigenous people. JK says that wanded magic is stronger than non wand magic (though in the books she said nonverbal/non wand magic is harder so wouldn't people who use this type of magic culturally, logically be stronger magic users? (Maybe its like a choir of people singing acapella aren't gonna be as loud as/ as good as a group of people with instruments and amps and microphones? I digress) So, If the first European Slave traders were wizards and the people they came in touch with were 1. non-magic users and/or 2. wandless magic users and they had wands, they would probably be able to quickly overpower them. So, you (a wanded european slaver/colonizer) come into contact with powerless and or easily over-powered people, show them repeatedly how much more powerful and cruel you are and put them in a position where they 1. aren't allowed to use their magic 2. they are repeatedly told their magic is inferior 3. Beat the magic outta them or allow them some sort of outlet where they aren't a threat to you (healing, voodoo, etc) in ways similar to how non magical poc were taught that their skin, language, ways of life were inferior and they just become part of the oppressed masses along with non-magical folk. Speaking realistically, American Wizards were 100% as racist as "no-maj's" so magical poc wouldn't have been welcomed to Ilvermorny or other magic schools til the 60s or 70s. There may have been schools for magical poc, just probably not during slavery times. If there were magical people on plantations or reservations, they were probably welcomed into the fold of whatever magic users already existed there, every plantation, town, or reservation has at least one and they are taught the old ways and to continue on the traditions.

Nice video, dude.

interesting video, very well explained and thought through points :) i didn't read harry potter as a child and only watched the movies until there were already 5 or 6 so it isn't like that deep for me and i never really thought about it but i do agree with you (also not a fan of jk)

You know what's weird? Whenever I'm researching something, a youtuber I like always seems to coincidentally release a video where they discuss a topic I was just researching. I was just reading about the history of Canada and some of the atrocities committed against members of the indigenous groups there. One of the things that stuck out to me was the fact that in the 1800's, the Canadian government set up a system that allowed individuals from the First Nations to obtain suffrage(among other things, they had to prove they were "civilized" and undergo an up to three year waiting period) and those who gained suffrage were referred to as status individuals and treated as a distinct group from non-status individuals. Non-status individuals didn't gain the right to vote until 1960, and apparently a division between status/non-status individuals still exists unofficially to this day.

YES! thank you for addressing residential schools. this video is really good!

Wow I am late to comments. I remember sitting in a Japanese history class and the lecture was on the beginning of the Edo Period when I truly realized how poorly thought out Rowling attempts at universe expanding was. The International Statute of Secrecy was passed in 1692 in response to Salem, but the shogunate instituted its self isolation policy between 1633 and 1639 by Tokugawa Iemitsu that continued until the mid 19th century. While Japan was never fully isolated, the only permitted contact with Europe was through Dutch traders who were restricted to Dejima Island in Nagasaki. So how would the rest of the wizarding world let Japanese magic users know that they had to go into hiding? And that's not even taking into account the extremely different relationship Japan has had with magic. Hell, the biggest reason for the International Statute of Secrecy, the European Witch Hunt craze, only really effected north-western Europe. I've come to realize after many years what the core problems of the wizarding world were: Rowling is a character writer above all, most of the world building runs on the rule of whimsy and the world is too small. Rowling's strength is in her characters who are served by the plot and world building. I'd argue that the majority of her world building was in the first three books, and some early editing choices would later hurt the plot of the series. Just look up the connections between Chamber of Secrets and Half Blood Prince. The next problem is the rule of whimsy. Rowling wears her Roald Dahl influence on her sleeve, and most of the world building choices were made to sound as quirky as possible. Sounds great when your target audience is older elementary kids, but becomes an issue as you try to age the story up because of tone. A lot of those early decisions, would come back to bite Rowling and Warner Bros in the ass years later as Rowling attempted to rationalize and deepen the decisions. This has contributed to a domino problem with the size of the wizarding world, and by that I mean the extremely tight focus on Hogwarts does not lend well to an expanded universe. The drive to expand the Harry Potter universe is likely driven by WB's desire to have a franchise that can financially prop up the DCEU, and thus we got Fantastic Beasts. And on the surface, Harry Potter seems like a logical choice to expand. But, because of the extremely tight focus on Harry and Hogwarts, I doubt Rowling had any real grasp on how the rest of the wizarding world operates. Combine that with lack of time to develop the world and general arrogance, and you get The Crimes of Grindelwald. Even with all the problems they have, the DCEU seems a far stronger universe than the Wizarding World. And after everything that has happened in 2020, I don't know if Harry Potter will survive the decade.

Who is Adrian alvarez I here his name as a patreon a lot- a true hero haha

Hmm... I don't know. This criticism only makes sense in a setting where the magic system is soft and open so that magic can literally do anything, which is a criticism I'm seeing more and more of literary works with a magic system, especially when the magic system is LITERALLY magic. But Harry Potter's magic system has rules. It is a hard-ish magic system that can do a lot of unexplained things, but unexplained things within its own rules. You can't literally just do whatever you want with magic, you have to know HOW to do what you want and you have several pre-requisites to it. For instance, wands. Casting a spell without a wand in the Potter universe is said to be exceptionally hard (for human wizards at least) and children can only do it because they sorta-kinda have an intuition to it. Contrived, but it makes sense within the world. Also, wands, spells and alchemical formulas are like technology. You have to develop and research them. It would make sense that the European wizard community, despite its aversion to science, would benefit from the scientific method to allow them to research a more varied and advanced forms of magic in all fronts compared to the rest of the world during the illumination period. A wizard muggleborn in a slaved community wouldn't be able to do anything at all against her oppressors since they wouldn't have a wand, wouldn't know how to get one or how to cast a spell, and wouldn't know any alchemical formulas (though... I don't know if the potterverse ever explicitly stated that only wizards can perform alchemy. A muggle should be able to cook a potion like any wizard should he have access to the formula and the magical ingredients). One of the most perverse sides of slavery is that you have to drown out the original culture of the slaved so that they don't have anything to get attached to other than the slaver's culture, so even if the slave's original culture HAD a tradition in magic, it would be very hard for the slave, especially one of third generation and beyond, to have any access or knowledge of it. Difficult but not impossible. In the potterverse the case of Haiti could be one where the slaves successfully hid their culture and magic tradition from their captors and then unleashed them when the time was right. But the thing is, magical tradition would be something extremely different in each corner of the world and europeans would have the advantage in the modern world thanks to the tradition of the scientific method (before them probably the middle east which were the most scientifically advanced until the imperial era). The magical traditions of the native americans would be wildly different. For instance, say they wouldn't know how to create portable wands and cast the same showy, instantaneous spells the Europeans can. But they created instead Totens to channel their magic, and cast more subtle but still powerful spells like weather magic. Likewise African magic culture would be different, considering that the African tradition magic is used for influence and objects. So, say, African wizards would employ armies of fetishes that were powerless against gunpowder and their influence spells just wouldn't work on Europeans due to a vastly different culture, or maybe even ethnicity, leaving them unfortunately powerless against their captors and conquerors out of sheer bad luck.

The whole ordeal with the muddle Borns and American history could be fixed to a degree but only to a certain extent. The American wizarding community would need to enforce a strict segregation that might not only involve deliberate brain washing and restriction of movement but a segregation on a scale and intensity rarely heard off in human history. For the native American magics not to have come to the aid of the non-magical communities would need this segregation and that would lead this to a place too dark for Rowling to think about. Not to mention that this does not explain the lack of natives in the wizarding community. But as you said, Rowling probably did not think of that when she wrote this.

Can we also just talk about the fact that the whole Harry Potter story (not Fantastic Beasts) happens because Voldemort's mom raped his dad and now he hates muggles? It feels like an unnecessary villain backstory.

I just realized that she had an identity card, in america in the 1920s.

The explanation is farily simple, actually: wizards in HP timeline are actual slavers. As in XXI century slavers: Dobby was a slave. And it wouldn't cost too much for a slave owner to actually kill a muggleborn wizard in his/her infancy. It is clearly a much darker story, but wizardry comes with a (fairly high) cost. Magic must be learned, you need a wand for most spells, and all that costs money. Also, I have no doubt that many of the slave owners in the Americas were wizards and witches themselves, using perhaps the powers of the muggleborn wizards to ehance their own. It is dark? Yes. But all he Voldemort regime is dark also (and it sounds really close to what the military dictatorships in countries such as Argentina and Chile than anything near modern Britain). This is not really the problem. There are other, way bigger problems to HP worldbuilding, like the wizarding schools and homeschooling, or Castelobruxo being the only wizard school in a mostly spanish speaking South American which talks in Portuguese. the economy and time travel.

Unfortunately, it's a plot hole too big to fit in my opinion. I've heard theories at say muggle-borns are born from squibs after a few generations but it's not a solid explanation for all the problems that exist in harry potter. JKR could address the fact that magic was used to combat slavery (and other historic events) but was later covered up with magic so the muggles couldn't remember but it would be hard to do so even if it was planned out from the start, let alone after the fact.

I mean, even if you look away from all the other issues, I just feel that all the world building is a MASSIVE missed opportunity.

to be honest, i did like fantastic beasts, but only cause i literally just looked at it on a surface level(cause im dumb and easily placated;;), and in that sense it's a good movie... but thinking about all this stuff, it actually kinda ruins the illusion. which is actually a good thing, because you can't really see clearly if you have a blindfold over your eyes made of pretty wand lasers;; so yeah, thank you for pointing all this out;;

Slaves and the native american wizards couldn't protect themselves because bullets are faster than spells.

could it be because without school wizards cant really do much magic? maybe unless they're taught it and practiced a lot they wouldn't be able to use it properly or strongly enough or wouldn't even know they had it like harry at first didn't...

What about Depp?

I honestly expected to be angry about this video, just judging from the title and such, but it was very well made and I agree with your reasoning completely! Thank you so much for bringing these issues to light. Also, the whole lore behind Ilvermorny makes zero sense, especially if it existed on the Canadian-US border. Consider the civil war! Did wizarding children just not go to school then?

its possible the wizarding communities helped support slavery, and possibly killed them as well to help maintain status quo. It's unlikely since we see a black female president of the wizarding government of America but its a thought. Also it could very well be that the Harry Potter world isn't really our world (though it looks like ours) and that slavery didn't happen which is crappy to consider in a way but it is a possibility.

It's very hard to mesh every real world event into a fantasy world story. Controversial topics will sometimes put off readers. If magic could solve all the problems in the Muggle world, it would have happened already, and then made for a very boring story. Adventure and Fantasy must have conflict to be interesting to read. Human enslavement has been an official part of the economic system of the world for thousands of years. Empires and kingdoms thrived on it. It was common for conquered people to become slaves to the conquerors. It was part of life. People did not believe it was wrong, (unless they were enslaved.) Slavery did not start with the British trade in 1619. And Wizards have existed also for that long, in the story line. If we follow the theory that Wizards had the power to end slavery, and that all wizards believed that slavery was wrong, then there would be no Egyptian pyramids for the Weasley's to visit in the summer before the events in The Prisoner of Azkaban. Remember, not all Wizards are good.

JK Rowling can’t have African American characters cuz other wise it’d be weird if they reacted to House Elves

I thought that I was a deep thinker, but I've really been proven wrong. I never noticed how little I questioned my fandoms because of their fantasy content.

3:55 Muggleborns have an ancestor they were biologically related to who was a wizard and Squibs had Muggles they were biologically related to as ancestors. That’s how they exist. I never saw magic as a biological hereditary thing though.

I believe there are some flaws in your critique. Firstly, muggle-born wizards are an extremely minuscule part of all wizards. Considering that the birth rates in the UK have been relatively the same since 1980, and that currently more than 700 000 people are born every year, even if we make it 500 000 for 1980, Only Hermione and Justin Finch-Fletchley are muggle-born wizards mentioned to be born that year, that would mean that only 2 out of every 500 000 people born are muggle-born wizards, even if we say that there were three more that were somehow not detected or just went unmentioned that would still make only 1 out of every 100 000 people born in the U.K. a muggle-born wizard and also they would be outnumber 9 to 1 by regular wizards. If we assume that this is the case globally and historically, it would mean that since there were about 11 000 000 slaves brought to the us, so about 110 muggle-born wizards among them, same for the Holocaust, and even the entire native american population of pre-Columbian US and Canada was not more than 20 000 000 with some estimates going below half of that, so about 200 muggle-born wizards, in fact the entirety of both of the Americas was 100 000 000 (again, with some estimates going below half of that), so 1000 at best. Even if wizards did not send anybody to restrain the ones who decided to use magic against the oppressors of their families, I believe muggles alone cold have dealt with that low of a number. Secondly, obscurials are a thing. How many of the muggle-born wizards, you think were encouraged to develop their magical gift and how much were urged to suppress it? Magical schools could have just blatantly refused to accept muggle-born wizards from the oppressed groups and let things develop naturally, dealing with the consequences, after all, it takes one skilled wizard to get rid off an obscurial. Thirdly, wizards are not established to be more virtuous or less prone to prejudice than muggles. To me it seems perfectly normal for them to be ignorant of or complicit with the atrocities committed, especially the ones in America, after all, I imagine quite a lot wizards were fleeing there to evade the inquisition in Europe, so securing land in the new world was a matter of life or death for their families and, I don't know about you, but I believe most people would kill if the survival of their family depends on it. If you or anybody by any chance reads that, feel free to tell me what you think and if and how you disagree with my reasoning. P.S. Sorry for using the word "wizard" so many times and also I used it as a gender neutral term (in case that was not clear).

This is so true, I always pondered how black wizards responded to slavery and racism.

Can anyone name a fantasy series where magic exists in a world similar to ours but isn't kept secret? Besides the mundane collective?

I mean, truly the problem lies in the fantastic beast movies claim that the wizarding community was so separated from the muggle community that while the American muggles still heavily struggled with unquestioned segregation and colour-based racism, American wizards had a black minister of magic to which no issues arose. (Nevermind that they still wanted to comment about segregation and racism by applying it to the way American wizards treat muggles instead.) Had the magic community been on the same page about racial discrimination as the non-magic one, one could have easily presumed that with wizards on both sides of the equation it would basically balance itself out, and not be a decisive factor anymore. (Perhaps the white magical slave-owners, might have taken care to be the ones owning the black wizards. The statute of secrecy and all that?) And while that's a sad implication it's by no means worse than actual history and it would largely make sense: we have been seeing racism in the wizarding community directed at muggles and certainly being accustomed to the willing slavery of house-elves certainly won't make it harder to accept enslaved humans. Not that it was a terrible idea to cast a black minister for magic, it just caused this specific problem within the text.

Well, to speak of imaginary fictional world: I think of it as there is a set (or some different sets) of genetic mutations that causes people to have physical extra-sensory and allow them to develop ways of using it (aka magic). I also picture that the distribution of such mutations among global population is quite pervasive (but not necessarily well-dispersed). So if we were to add a lot of magic-capable people to all group of non-magical people and let them fall to the same pit of conquest, racism, hatred, fear, and the notions of self-importance and superiority that people actually have in real history, I think it's not that far-fetched to assume that the overall history (as opposed to specific local events) remains similar to ours. . Another issue related to this video is that how the wizardry community withdraw itself from the rest of the world. I think if people grew tired of this history of cruelty and violent, the rough conclusion might go down to either *THAT* or people ultimately kill off other groups entirely or enslave them if they could, especially if they are strongly identified themselves as separate group like in this case of fictional wizardry world. . Also it's more likely that the wizardry community might not be well unified. There were mentions of both 'witch-hunting' and 'muggle-hunting' throughout this fictional history. And the magical community (or rather 'communities' if they're that diverse) clearly underwent intense war within the community itself to find its position and identity in the world. (Be superior or be civilized) So it's not that as simple as 'magic ends all' or 'magic ultimately determines outcomes'. . Anyway, I'm not saying that Rowling's writing is flawless because if you decide to tap into local cultures around the world without a big team and serious research, your writing is going to end up sloppy. And I don't really buy the name 'Mahoutokoro'.

6:14 breaking the statute is life in Azkaban in the Uk and death in the US

I find it funny that the author of this video paints the Haitian revolution as a purely positive thing, ignoring the warcrimes agaisnt the white minority among which only the polish were spared (including the r@pe of white women). This exacerbates the Haitian nationalist myth just as much as, for example, denying British imperialistic crime does to the british one, yet people who consider themselves on the political far left seem to ignore such a contradiction. Almost as if discussions on this subject are completely mired by political interest over historical accuracy on both sides.

1:50 the presidents literally black but yet again apparently she’s from Georgia

It is sloppy...but do we have numbers of Magical people? In her universe...how many Magical people are there? If there are only a few hundred, then no they couldn't just take over and shape the world as they please. Also there is in fact some agreement where magical and muggle governments interact. Why? What happened? was there a war or disaster and some rules where input? Also...there is the mulit-versal aspect. The dimensions are separate. When you say world, which do you mean? How do we know all these terrible things happen in THEIR world? Does she say? Are you suggesting we go around universes and be the multi-dimensional police? The USA tries to be the police, but humans are imperfect and that causes much bad and some good. Would the magical community do any better? They have powers but don't seem to be higher beings as far as behavior. Would they be better police than the USA is, of course not. They would effect more with magic but do great harm too. They seem busy with their own problems...as we can clearly see. IN FACT, they act exactly as we do. Happily debate esoterica while starving, butchered millions cry for our help. It take a great villain to rally them, only to see many side with that evil. Aren't muggles ( who represent human reality) that way too? I think she knows what she was doing. They have power but dont use it ( just like us ) they have their own problems and see others as if in another dimension ( just like we do) and...and maybe she also just created a hot mess

A young witch or wizard doesn’t have control over their powers, a wand is about as useful as a gun. Why didn’t former slaves who bought their freedom buy a gun and shoot their former slaver? There’s far more to a revolution than just killing your master. If magical people have all power (the series shows most have many flaws and aren’t that good at it) in the world to stop slavery then they also would’ve stopped the witch hunts. That would also have to be explained as to how they still got burned. As for muggle borns, given we have mutants and throw backs, it makes sense that mud bloods would exist. Of course they’d still need to be kept a secret. A parent isn’t gonna tell anyone if they know their child could be burned. Even if a wizard got out his wand and killed the former slaver, someone behind him could shoot him in the back. Wizards aren’t immune.

One word. janissaries.

Let's face it, Rowling isn't good with non-British history in general, even European history. Why are there no Spanish, Italian or Portuguese Magic Schools, for example? They can't all go abroad. Durmstrang is supposed to cover "Eastern Europe", with no political distinction between various countries -and, especially in the 90s, that would be a clusterfuck. What language do they even speak? Is it German? Russian? Bulgarian? Albania between 1991-1998 was in the middle of a war, yet no less than three wizards went there and they only problem they had were magical ones. It's clear Rowling does well within British history, but the moment she strays from that the problems begin.

BRO BOTH THESE HARRY POTTER VIDEOS HAVE ME SCREAMING? YESSS BITCH GO OFF ON THIS SHIT WRITING

Well, there is a slightly less horrific way of explaining away the problem of muggle-borns if I am remembering my Harry Potter world building correctly. From what I remember, magic is hereditary and muggle-borns have a squib somewhere in the family tree whose magic is resurfacing (as a biology major, I take issue with calling this specifically hereditary, but this is magic, I'm willing to give it non-scientific inheritance laws). Therefore, if you were to reason that magic communities outside of late twentieth century Britain were much better at keeping their squibs in the wizarding community (i.e. squibs did not have children with muggles), it would be reasonable to conclude that there wouldn't be muggle-born wizards. This explanation is rather shaky and does have it's own problems, but it seems the most reasonable to me. You still have the problem of what wizarding communities would do in the instances mentioned (I find it hard to believe that all of the wizarding Native Americans would be down for relocation, but if they were sufficiently afraid of being discovered as wizards, maybe, but unlikely). This explanation becomes even more improbable the closer to present day we get, as canonically muggle-borns are somewhat common in the late 20th century. I know J. K. Rowling has wizarding wars that parallel the world wars, but there are significant logistical problems that remain.

Wizards from all cultures uniformly deciding on dropping their preexistent histories and feuds and playing the world-wide masquerade game is just colonialist arrogance on Rowling's part. It would be like Marvel Loki upon discovering his Frost Giant lineage gleefully ditching and betraying the Asgardians he grows up with. No. Every person I know would opt for staying behind and fighting alongside their Muggle kinsmen against evil foreigner Muggles and foreign wizards alike.

So, I haven't actually seen Fantastic Beasts, but it feels to me like you're pushing the rules of this universe way out of context, and I don't really see how this is a very useful way of analysing media. I mean, let's take Santa Claus for example. Santa is a story set in our universe, which says that on a specific day of the year, an all-seeing magic man will go all around the world giving gifts to children if they have been nice, and nothing if they have been naughty. How would Santa have dealt with the issue of enslaved children? Would he still have given them gifts if they disobeyed their masters? Conversely, why did he keep bringing gifts to those who profited from slavery? Abusing another person seems pretty naughty to me. What would he do if the slave owners took away his magically appearing presents? Why did he never gift anyone their freedom? I mean, here's an all-powerful man who watches these enslaved children be abused every day for an entire year, and then he gives them, what? A toy train? Applying the rules of Santa to slavery, or privacy debates, or the Syrian civil war gives you disturbing implications with poor answers. But does that mean that Santa has bad world building? I don't think so- I think you could find these sorts of issues with almost any piece if you dug deeply enough into the minutia of the ruleset and found a context far enough removed from the story. And I don't really see how that adds anything useful to the discussion.

Next you will tell me a big giant on a flying bike won’t come and save me from my poor existence under the stairs.

Misleading title. Fantastic Beasts didn't address your points, but also didn't have explanations that went against what was previously stated in the potterverse. Just because they didn't say the things you think they should doesn't mean it's 'broken', it just means it hasn't been explained. You're making a lot of assumptions here that aren't backed up by anything in the media you're ostensibly complaining about, as you didn't cite a single thing from the movie, making your argument literally baseless. Just because the movie didn't spend twenty minutes going "And here's the entire history of MACUSA!" doesn't make it 'sloppy' or 'poorly thought it out', it just wasn't relevant to the plot of the movie, which, by it's nature, will have less information and explanations than a book would. Now, don't get me wrong, Rowling's tendency to retcon her way out of her problems makes the world a hot mess (Timeturners!), but your criticism of the movie isn't fair in the slightest.

Hi Me

iiii mean isn't the simplest explanation just that wizarding communities were filled with the same exact kind of racismand other bigotry as the muggle communities? like to me the much more glaring issue is that magic was never used to prevent atrocities like the holocaust, and that plothole can kind of only be explained by 'there were wizards on both sides' so why wouldn't there be wizards on both sides of the american slavery debate?

Maybe there were racist white wizards attacking native wizards?

We get it. You hate Harry Potter and White People...

Ok, a great video explaining the plot holes. But I think it's unfair to go and call her world-building sloppy. Ok fine, she got the history wrong. But apart from that, she created a pretty spectacular world. A world that is enjoyable to watch and read. I don't want to pull the "I'd like to see you make a better world" card. But really what's more important? The correct history that few will look into or know? Or making a world that is interesting and can be better than history itself? Again, a great video explaining the plot holes in her world. But I think it's wrong to call her world-building sloppy. Nobody's perfect. And if we have to sacrifice false history for an amazing world that is the Harry Potter world, well then i'm all for it.

No. It works perfectly.

Go back and reread Pottermore... Why didn't magical Natives and Africans just use magic to revolt...because there were wizards oppressing them too. Pottermore tells us that by the late 17th century, Scourers had multiplied to become lawless threat to European wizards and presumably non-Natives too. Also due to the Scourers violence, fewer wizarding families chose to immigrate from Europe. So, the magical population did not grow very much. Also, consider the advantage that European wizards would have had with wands. They would have been more adept at using the Dark Arts. There is also the likelyhood of Native American wizards contracting new foreign diseases like Dragon Pox, although Pottermore does not mention this. Lastly, who says that successful slave revolts did not happen because of wizards. Rowling writes wizardry into actual events. For example, she tells us that there were Scourers leading the Salem witch Trials. So there could have been wizards fighting wars and leading slave rebellions. But there were also wizards running the slave trade and oppressing natives. Its just like the muggle ministers asks in the first chapter of HBP. He freaks out at Scrimgeour and Fudge for not being able to magically win the war against Voldemort. Of course they replied that the other side can do magic too.

Guys it's a childrens book and meant for entertainment purposes only. People these days literally have to criticize everything.

"actually real" or "exact same" are redundant terms (you're just using a synonym for emphasis immediately after the original word) often found only in American vocabulary. Please get rid of them. They don't suit an educated (I'm assuming) woman like you.

I'M BROKEN!!!! -Pantera ( Probably!)