The Fountain of Magical Bretheren, first described in Chapter 7 of The Order of the Phoenix, represents the colonial, supremacist attitudes that permeate Rowling's Wizarding World. Rowling writes, "Halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life-size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-looking wizard with his wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf. The last three were all looking adoringly up at the witch and wizard" (59-60). At the end of the book, after his duel with Voldemort in the atrium of the Ministry (which happened to destroy the Fountain of Magical Brethren), Dumbledore says to Harry, "The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward" (391).
Rowling is clearly attempting to channel colonialist statues like the statue of Theodore Roosevelt that was removed from the Museum of Natural History earlier this year. The Roosevelt statue depicts an Indigenous man and an African man trailing Roosevelt's horse in an image that Mabel O. Wilson, a Columbia University professor, describes as "clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination" (Pogrebin). Rowling's statue is a stand-in for colonialist statues in the real world.
However, there's a glaring issue with her depiction of witch and wizard supremacy in the Harry Potter series. She continually assigns the plights of real racial and ethnic groups in her books to various magical creatures, thus further othering those groups and proposing that her own white, Anglo background is the "norm" or the standard. In previous books, Rowling has likened the plight of house-elves to enslaved people around the world; Hermoine's role as an "abolitionist" and advocate for house-elves' liberation is presented in the form of her organization, Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. But if Rowling is attempting to draw a parallel between the American slave trade and the enslavement of house-elves, then her own portrayal of house-elves is highly problematic. House-elves are continually depicted as craving subservience; the only elf that actually wants freedom is Dobby, while the rest are offended at the notion of being freed. Another issue is that Hermione, then, is positioned as a righteous white savior. Rowling's portrayal of goblins fall into the same trap. In the Harry Potter series, goblins are an oppressed group of people constantly fighting for the survival of their race. They eventually emerge with a banking monopoly, but are still widely loathed by wizards and witches. Usually, when goblins are portrayed in the books, they are hunting down a debtor or inquiring about gold. The jury is split on whether Rowling is intentionally portraying anti-Semitism in her world through the oppression of goblins, but in reality, she's engaging in anti-Semitism by furnishing her goblins with Jewish stereotypes. And history repeats itself in book five, as the plight of centaurs is populated with the circumstances of Indigenous people, including a reservation system put in place by the Ministry.
The Harry Potter series has been called out for its utter lack of diversity and failure to represent students of different cultures. Rowling's repeated assignment of different races, backgrounds, and ethnicities to non-human magical beings does not combat bigotry, as she may think it does. It is, at best, an unconscious but nonetheless dangerous reinforcement of the notion that white/Anglo is the standard.
