Writing Assignments for Social Awareness: Assignment Three

            Right now, I am reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets( well, re-reading. And yes, dear readers, I abandoned the second book of The Luxe series.) by J.K. Rowling. While thinking about social issues that surface in the book, I didn't realize the very obvious one.
            In the second book of the Harry Potter series, Harry is introduced to the wizarding world's version of racism. In the world of magic, there are three classifications of wizard: pure-blood, half-blood, and muggle-born. Pure-bloods descend from two magical parents. Half-bloods have one magical parent and one non-magical one (a muggle.) Muggle-borns come from two muggle parents. Now, who you were born from has no influence on your magical talents, but some people believe that pure-bloods are the superior race. Some pure-bloods believe that the magical world should only be composed of their kind.
            I think J.K. Rowling meant this social issue in the book to reflect on social issues in the real world as they are today. The pure-blood dominated society of Harry Potter is meant to reflect instances throughout human history when one group of people persecuted another because of differences in race, gender, or religion; specifically, maybe the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., where black people were discriminated against and had to fight for their rights after being enslaved for centuries, or the Holocaust, where the Jewish were rounded up and slaughtered.  One character in the book, Hermione Granger, is a muggle-born and extremely intelligent. Yet Draco Malfoy, a pure-blood, frequently shows her cruelty and makes it clear how she disgusts him. At one point in the book, Malfoy calls Hermione a mudblood, which is a horrible name for a muggle-born. This use of words to hurt people reminds me of names given to countless people through history when they were thought too inferior to be considered people.