From our very beginnings as a nation, we have had beliefs, policies, social conventions, and laws based on a theoretical color of blood. The slave-holding states fought to have slaves counted in the number of people in their states as it a boosted their number of representatives. A compromise settled this. Article I, section 2, clause 3 originally stated that "a state's number of representatives shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons...." Also included were slaves indentured for three years, "excluding Indians not taxed...." It goes on to say that "three fifths of all Other Persons" are also counted. The "all Other Persons" were slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, and, theoretically made them free Persons. This increased the number of Reresentatives in former slave-holding states, but former slaves and white people were different kinds of free persons. As in Orwell's Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." In the South, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1968, Jim Crow Laws assured that people of color were far less equal.
In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the magic world's prejudices parallel those of our own world. There are characters like Dumbledore and the Weasley family who believe there is no difference among witches and wizards, whether muggle born, half-bloods, or pure-bloods. Slytherin House witches and wizards believe only pure-bloods should attend Hogwarts. The Malfoy family are virulent racists, and by the time we read The Deathly Hallows, the Ministry of Magic is rounding up muggle-born and exiling them from the community.
The pure-blood doctrine of the Death Eaters is no different from that of White Supremacists today. The rounding up of muggles alludes to Nazi Germany and makes clear that government enforcement of racial superiority ends badly. Racial epithets are meant to make "the other" a less-than. If a human is viewed as a person, a person of color or a black person should be acknowledged as a person. Those who stoop to using words of denigration make their targets unpersons. Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a mud-blood, and Ron is horrified. Mud-blood in Harry Potter World is the same as the N-word in ours.
Those who scream that the world has become too PC must think beyond that knee-jerk reaction. I taught grammar for nearly 30 years. My career began when we used he or she with everyone, when we used chairman for men and women. It was grammatically correct, and I thought it was overreacting when early feminists saw this usage as sexist. I did until a child's perception smacked me into reality. My daughter came home from elementary school in the 1980s wishing she could run as her room chairman for the Fall Festival. "Why don't you?" I asked. "Mom! It's chairman. Man! I'm a girl!" Words matter more than we know. A child who grows up being told that he or she is being diminished by name-calling grows up either angry or demoralized. Neither makes our world stronger or better. I read a tweet recently saying that racism and sexism are siblings. They are indeed. Both are efforts to make one group like pure-bloods--or at the very least half-bloods--the better group.
White better than black or brown? Males superior to females? Straights better than gays? In our country's history, blacks have been enslaved, women treated as chattel. We interned and took the possessions and property of American citizens who happened to be Japanese. Our great history includes Indian genocide, signs reading "No dogs or Irish allowed." Harry Potter teaches us to look at these attitudes and to decide where we stand. Where would the Sorting Hat put place you? Harry Potter sat on the stool in the Great Hall of Hogwarts and thought, "Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin." I hope the U.S. finds its way to "not Slytherin."
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