[img]http://www.snitchseeker.com/images/news/poa_hermione_80.jpg' align='middle'> Harry Potter and Human-racism -

Summary:
Betterhumans.com has an opinion piece on Harry Potter, Hermione and, "human-racism".

Article:

Monsters in the Media

Popular books, movies and television shows are some of the few places addressing human-racism and the citizenship of nonhumans

The Christian right has been very upset with Harry Potter. Its constituents allege that Hogwarts celebrates witchcraft and juvenile disobedience. But they have missed an even more important reason to burn Rowlings' books: Her radical opposition to human-racism.

As an example, Harry Potter's friend Hermione becomes obsessed with elf rights when she discovers that elves are enslaved throughout the wizarding world, forced to work without pay, denied clothing and treated as subhuman. Yet elves are nearly as intelligent as human beings, if somewhat simple-minded in their slavish, magic-enforced commitment to their lives of service.
Hermione starts the Society for the Promotion of Elf Welfare, S.P.E.W., and tries to raise the consciousness of her classmates at Hogwarts. But her abolitionism meets with the same opposition that the opponents of slavery met 200 ago. "They're happy that way." "They aren't human."

Once Hermione is sensitized to the human-racism in the treatment of elves she begins to recognize it in the discrimination suffered by her werewolf and half-giant teachers. Then she makes a much more fundamental connection—human-racism against intelligent nonhumans is connected to the aristocratic racism against "muggles" (non-magical humans) and "mudbloods" (magical people with non-magical parents) central to Lord Voldemort's fascism.

Refusing to recognize the basic dignity of intelligent nonhuman persons on racial grounds is only one step removed from the belief that some humans are biologically superior to others. Antifascist leader and school headmaster Albus Dumbledore also makes the connection when he grants elves rights, hires nonhumans and reaches out to the despised giants, counseling "we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided."