Snapedom

Claiming that prejudice against Muggleborns is wrong *because* they are wizards plays into this prejudice. To quote from upthread on this:

"Never mind the Muggles (or anyone other than wizards), for a moment. I'm talking about wizard on wizard racism, here. Pure-bloods, half-bloods, and Muggle-borns are all wizards. Blood purists may deny that Muggle-borns are part of the wizard race, but that doesn't make it so. Regardless of whether Muggle-borns are "mutations" or have wizard ancestry somewhere, they are wizards and are part of the wizard race."

"Jewish people are part of the human race, and yet they were still declared separate from the Aryan race which is also part of the human race, and Jews were furthermore declared sub-human in comparison by the Nazis/Aryan supremacists. Muggle-borns are part of the wizard race, and yet they were still declared separate from the pure-bloods and half-bloods which are also part of the wizard race, and Muggle-borns were furthermore delcared sub-wizard in comparison by the DE's/pure-blood supremacists. Same difference."

There is a confusion here between 'race' as distinguishing different varieties of human being and 'race' as distinguishing the human species from others. Mapping this onto wizard/Muggle relations produces a disturbing result, however:

1) The issue with purebloods is whether Muggleborns count as part of the "wizard race." See first quote. Muggleborns are prejudiced against because they are not (to the bigots) seen as part of the wizard race - they are seen as little better than the Muggles from which they are descended. Muggles are also considered inferior, of course. Claiming that Muggleborns are pureblood' equals explicitly *because they are also wizards* is implicitly supporting the view that Muggles are inferior, because it makes the *separation* of Muggleborns and Muggles the key to Muggleborns' status as equal to other wizards. Claiming that Muggleborns are purebloods' equals because they and Muggles are all human, regardless of magical ability, is something different.

2) The issue with the Nazis, as with all real-world racists, is whether members of other races count as human. That is, as part of the "human race." Precisely. See second quote.

The parallels these quotes set up are thus:

"Blood purists…deny Muggleborns are part of the wizard race." They "were declared separate from the pure-bloods and half-bloods which are also part of the wizard race…and furthermore declared sub-wizard." Muggleborns are however part of the wizard race, and therefore are purebloods' equals.

Nazis declared Jews "separate from the Aryan race, which is also part of the human race." They were also declared "sub-human." Jews however are also part of the human race and therefore Aryans' equals.

Blood-purists = Nazis/Aryan supremacists
Purebloods = Aryans
Muggleborns = Jews
[Halfbloods = persons of mixed Jewish/Aryan descent]

Purebloods, Muggleborns and perhaps half-bloods are seen as the various races within the overarching "wizarding race."

Aryans, Jews and perhaps people of mixed descent are considered the various races within the overarching "human race."

Therefore, the claim that anti-Muggleborn prejudice mirrors the Nazis' racism produces this analogy:

wizards = humans

What about Muggles indeed.

The result is there structurally in how anti-Muggleborn prejudice is defined here, even if one explicitly claims that Muggles are also human.