Racism In Harry Potter

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Whittling Away the Wizarding Ways: Ingrained Racism in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone The wizarding world is a magical, seemingly perfect world, especially from the perspective of the protagonist of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter. When Harry enters the wizarding world everything seems fantastic; however, it is clear that there are some very strong prejudices ingrained in the wizarding society. This racism that pureblood wizards hold against Muggles and Muggle-borns prevents progress from taking place in many instances. It is shown throughout the novel that the wizarding world has some great advantages over the Muggle one in terms of using magic to complete tasks; however, this …show more content…
This judgement first becomes apparent when Harry meets Draco Malfoy, a pureblood wizard. Malfoy makes it clear that he believes Hagrid is a lesser being for being a Giant when he says “‘I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he? … I’ve heard he’s sort of savage – lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his bed’” (Rowling, 84). As Malfoy is eleven years old, it can be assumed that he is repeating his parent’s views of Muggle-borns and magical creatures. This is a fault of wizarding society because it shows that racism is an ingrained part of society, passed down from parents to children. This also prevents Malfoy from developing his own opinions of Muggles and Muggle-borns because that hatred is so deep in his beliefs. This distaste of magical creatures could be based on the foundation that granting other creatures status may lessen theirs. The Malfoy’s are a very wealthy family and it is possible that they are threatened by other magical creatures, so they choose to dismiss them rather than grant them …show more content…
However, once the world is examined it is clear that there is some short-sightedness in wizarding ways. Rowling shows the reader that although the wizarding society has promise there is still blatant racism and a hatred for Muggles and muggle-borns, even though the wizarding society could probably learn something from Muggles. Rowling is able to show the reader through the comparison of the Muggle and wizarding worlds that prejudice and racism against other cultures and ways of life is a universal issue. Because racism is a universal problem, it would be better for the wizarding society to learn from Muggle’s mistakes rather than make their own and create more problems. Wizarding society could see the problems that extreme racism that Muggles have encountered and learn from them. Families like the Weasley’s may be open to this type of learning, but other families will not. Instead, many other families will refuse to see the power of cooperation possibly because they are worried about losing status. The wizarding and Muggle worlds could improve each other if there was collaboration. Unfortunately, these two worlds cannot mutually improve due to prejudice and preconceived
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