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Goblin dress[]

Do goblins wear robes too, or do they have their own style of dress?  Bad Wolf 14:57, September 26, 2013 (UTC)

Who knows? The movies depict them wearing (somewhat extravagant) business suits, but the movies don't have the wizards wearing robes either, or rarely so, so who knows, really. Scrooge MacDuck (talk) 22:58, July 31, 2018 (UTC)

Getting around the Wand Ban[]

What prevents Goblins from learning to craft their own wands? Even a Muggle like Jame Steward could learn to do it... Even if the Ministry of Magic tried to stop them, they could still do it in secret, and they are smart, resourceful and magic-savvy enough to avoid detection...

Also there probably are Wizards unscrupulous enough to buy wands and sell those to Goblins... how do the Ministry of Magic prevents that?Galeah (talk) 22:39, November 23, 2016 (UTC)

The same way the Muggle police regulates firearms in real-life countries that ban or restrict them. Naturally, a few outlaws will always slip through the cracks, like Gnarlak and his two bootleg wands; and someone like the Goblin King probably has an illicit wand hidden away somewhere for important occasions. Scrooge MacDuck (talk) 22:58, July 31, 2018 (UTC)

antisemitism[]

Sad there is no discussion or section on the troubling aspects of the goblins resembling antisemetic tropes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cliveklg123 (talkcontribs).

Why do you believe Goblins in the Harry Potter universe embody anti-Semitic tropes? Could you please also remember to always sign your messages with your signature, thank you. RedWizard98 (talk) 22:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
The tropes I believe OP is referring to are "non-human money lender of non-human morals, often described as ugly or having malicious intent." The long nose, the swarthy colouration and the role in banking or moneylending are all used in antisemitic depictions and conspiracy theories. The problem comes from the fact that they root from long-standing historic xenophobia that has become so culturally ingrained as to often be unnoticeable to those it doesn't directly affect. As a child, I never realised the way in which the HP Goblins could be considered antisemitic while many Jewish people I know found it far more glaring.
I think it's also worth considering whether JKR intended for them to be antisemitic or whether she was simply uncritically reusing tropes from the genres she was emulating. The useless adults is a genre trope of boarding school fiction and childrens fiction in general, wildly dangerous sports and exaggerated familial abuse common to children's fiction, especially fantasy fiction as a precursor to leaving to go to the fantasy realm... and racist creature tropes are a part of a lot of fantasy fiction. A good non-HP example of this problem is the Drow of D&D - objectively evil beautiful , black skinned, matriarchal elves. They're pretty racist and sexist and clearly manifest the creator's own issues with women and people of colour... but the Drow have also been used in ways aside from that which muddies the waters as to how to interpret them. Other creators have used them in ways aside from their specific origin, but that doesn't stop people from seeing them as being emblematic of racism.
Lastly, all of this is out of universe Doylist discussion of the fiction which generally doesn't go on here? Most of the discussion on this wiki is about the worldbuilding itself and it's internal consistency (or lack thereof) which I hope answers your question as to why it hasn't really come up, OP. The fandom has certainly discussed it, just not here. If you'd like, I can point you in the direction of some fics and metas on the subject. --Estrildis (talk) 14:50, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Well thanks for explaining your thoughts on this subject, but personally I would say this is speculative analysis; Rowling has never made anti-Semitic comments, nor has she been accused of anti-Semitism, as opposed to other well-known recent criticisms of her opinions. This wiki is also supposed to strictly focus on the Harry Potter franchise, so while discussions of other fictional works can help us make analogies and parallels to the Harry Potter series, we need to remember they are entirely separate and that Harry Potter has its own rules and concepts. I would not include the idea that Goblins are anti-Semitic caricatures because I simply believe it is far too speculative and controversial to argue so, so it could likely cause disagreements over what it is fact an extremely serious issue, which could draw away from the franchise. RedWizard98 (talk) 16:08, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
I wouldn't call it speculative analysis - that'd be using this to accuse JKR of being antisemitic - it's more a kind of literary analysis; looking at what she wrote and the tropes she used and the context that they come from. Regardless, as I said in my last paragraph, it's not the kind of thing that comes up on this wiki. I mentioned Doylist discussion, this wiki generally tends much more Watsonian. I do think people may have reason to wonder at JKR's use of certain tropes (because firstly death of the author, and secondly her general transphobia) but I rather agree that that kind of discussion is better kept to other fandom spaces than this one. Likewise, the fact that goblins have been used as antisemitic caricatures before and that in HP they are almost uniformly bankers is worth discussing in contrast to how JKR deliberately used other aspects of Nazi propaganda and antisemitic caricature to draw parallels in the story - such as the grandparent rule blood-supremacists in canon use for defining muggle-borns, which came from Nazi ideology - but again, probably on other forums than this one.
Then again, I'm not OP. You don't need to argue that it'd be unwise to discuss it here, I'm just trying to explain my understanding of the matter. They still haven't weighed in; for all we know it was more a comment on the state of things than a desire to start discussion themselves. -- Estrildis (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
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