Harry Potter and Racial Identity

Friday, July 27, 2007

I’ll have to think more about this, but it is an interesting topic covered down at The American Prospect (which btw seems to give away some Harry Potter secrets - so don’t read if you haven’t read it or want to know yet):

What are the politics of Harry Potter? The rift in the magical world described over the course of J.K. Rowling’s epic pits the young wizard and his companions against the terrorizing, fascistic Lord Voldemort, who seeks to “cleanse” the wizarding community of “mudbloods,” those witches and wizards born into non-magical families. Parallels to the Holocaust and other genocides and apartheid regimes are easy to draw.