Oh, and in terms of this:

Companies cannot act with criminal intent because they have no human capacity for intent,” Reich says. “Arthur Andersen may have sounded like a person but the accounting firm was a legal fiction. . . how can any jury, under any circumstances, find that a company ‘knew’ that ‘its’ actions were wrong? A company cannot know right from wrong. A company is incapable of knowing anything. Nor does a company itself take action. Only people know right from wrong, and only people act. That is a basic tenet of democracy.”

OK - if you are saying that only people have moral responsibilities - fair enough. (Though some day we may have to extend the definition of people to include electronic persons.) But it is also important to understand that an institution can be evil in the sense that its only function is to let or help people do evil things. That is why certain organizations are illegal in the U.S.

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers. I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.

I can absolutely see many people not reading it that way in absolutely the same way I doubt JKR intended to write it that way.

But it always (and has since Klingon days of yore) made me wonder. Too rarely for my interest do writers say how humans are summed up in the same way they capsule describe other species in the story. And not all of them are doing it in a PoV way.

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers.

I think that they're different enough from humans that that reading is far from inevitable. Especially since we've already got a much more obvious ethnic group analogy among the humans.

The conversations about "The house elves want to do what they're doing" gave me a slight bit of pause, but that was very slight, because any thinking about it pretty quickly lead to "They're not human." And we were frequently reminded by Dumbledore that house elves have their own kind of magic. (The most obvious being that they can Apparate within Hogwarts.)

Similarly, with the goblins, we weren't told that they were greedy. We were told that they believe that anything goblin-made belongs to them. As far as I can recall, the only two objects that we're told Griphook looked at greedily were the tiara and the sword, both of which were goblin-made.

Isn't it possible that what appear as species attributes are really cultural ones? That centaurs don't have high-handedness somehow written into their genes but as a cultural trait? We don't really ever see any of these non-human groups in isolation from their species.

I can't see how either species can avoid being read as ethnic groups by a large portion of readers.

Then I would think that has more to do with the individual reader than how the author presented it. Like ita and Hil, I never read the books and thought, "Oh nice. The Goblins are obviously supposed to represent Jews." I mean, I can *see* how it can be read like that now, but I needed it pointed out to me.

I'm sure JKR did not intend it, but it does not mean it won't be there for many.

But is that JKR's responsibility in the end? Or any author's for that matter? Are authors responsible for how their readers will take something in their story? Should authors read through their texts and edit themselves because some readers might take issue with how a fantastical species/race of being is being portrayed and what parallels some readers draw from it?

(And I'm not asking this specifically of you, Typo. Just wondering out loud.)

well, it's kind of like the memfault!trade aliens in Phantom Menace. Lucas said that he did not intend for them to be seen as Asian, but pretty much everyone saw it.

Ok, but how much of that is Lucas's responsibility? How can he account for what people are going to infer?

Yes, that's what I was saying. Although, personally, I would have been hard pressed NOT to see it. I believe that he didn't intend it, but I think that he was in some denial.

AH!

I need more coffee.

(See - my default is noone agress with me so I inferred you were saying I was FOS. Hee.)

Intentional or not, Lucas managed to create several fictional alien species in TPM who were basically just laundry lists of racist sterotypes. (Jar-Jar, the Not!Asians, the Not!Jew who owned Anakin & his mother, and so on.)

I'm not saying he has a responsibility to not be an ignorant dumbass, but it sure wouldn't hurt.

JKR's species have enough depth to give her plausible deniability, at the very least.