Harry Potter And Racism In The United States

I grew up on Harry Potter. Actually, I think it's safe to assume that we all did. One thing I love about my generation is how seriously we take our Hogwarts houses. It's something that we can all identify with - sitting down as third graders and reading or watching the Harry Potter series. So, I think I speak for all of us when I say that the series played an integral part of our childhoods. Yet, I still come across the most infuriating posts and statuses on social media about the state of our nation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone has to agree with me on politics, but I feel like we should all have human decency and comfort ourselves with empathy and compassion.

It has been nearly impossible to escape politics (not that I mind, but that is beside the point), so I'm sure we've all heard about Trump's executive order on immigration. This has been a bit a hot topic lately. Regardless of the way you feel about immigration, I feel like there are some obvious parallels between what we are living and what we read in our favorite young adult novels. NOW, I'M NOT SAYING LORD VOLDEMORT IS PRESIDENT TRUMP, and I want to make that clear, but I want to point out some things that I think some of us might be overlooking.

I've noticed that, somehow, some can understand why the Muggle Born Registry and the Ministry of Magic taking people’s wands away was wrong, but can't seem to apply those same concepts to reality. In the name of national security, a Muslim Registry and detaining legal visa holders and children as young as 5 years old may not seem so outrageous, but this is essentially the same thing.

We live in a time where it's so easy to disconnect from society and become desensitized to all the racism, sexism, and craziness that is going on right now. So, we can't let our government and mindset embody the same ideals and practices we saw and greatly opposed in the Harry Potter series.

We live in a really weird time - a time in our society where racism is consciously unacceptable to the point where it’s the worst possible insult, allowing all but the most horrific acts of racism to not actually count as racism. At times, pointing out racism is considered more offensive than racism itself because it’s so bad that anything less than the most extreme case minimizes the horror of “real” racism. Racism isn't just presented in lynching or consciously feeling superior to an entire other race, but also through acts such as supporting not allowing refugees entry into our country because it "compromises" national security.

Our favorite works of young adult fiction have always alluded to history. If we can scrape up empathy for our favorite characters in those books, I fail to understand why you are unable to translate that same rationale to reality.