Blackcatter, there are wizards and muggles and house elves and goblins and snakes and giants and ghosts and centaurs and spiders--all would constitute at the very least different types that have the equivalent of races (in that they all speak and think and interact as they do with the wizards). Harry's slight romantic interest in the fourth book is a young woman wizard who is Asian.

Class vs Race are often confused with each other, and that might be the case here. We aren't generally told what the race of the various characters are, but we are given clues as to where in society they fit. If race is presumed based on class, then the reader is doing much of that himself. Not all readers will bring the same interpretations to the levels of income and the races.

What do you think was "read into your comments?" They were responded to in an open and frank manner. Clearly there are differing views of the quality of these books and the interpretations of the stories and characters therein.

On a note related to your comments on reading mythology as a source of monsters, I found a wonderful little book in the remainders at Half Price Books recently. It is called It's Greek To Me!--Brush Up Your Classics (HarperCollins, 1991) and it gives wonderfully concise descriptions of many stories and creatures and ideas that have made their way into modern times from ancient Greek myth and philosophers. It's by Michael Macrone, who was teaching English and Western Civilization at UC Berkeley at the time he wrote this.

SRS