SRS, I didn't say that it *was* racism in the sense we know it, rather that it has a *parallel* with racism as we know it. It's prejudice against other beings because of what they are and not who they are. (Two good HP examples are the treatment of Hagrid when his giant ancestry is known and the treatment of Lupin when he's found to be a werewolf; there's also the unconscious prejudice shown by Hermione trying to use the centaurs, and by one character asking a centaur "Did Hagrid breed you then?")

(Off-topic, it's in the same way that Asimov didn't ever use the word "racism" in his robots stories, but there's a clear parallel between humans' treatment of robots in Asimov's work and the racism of the time.)

Fantasy is *very* good for tackling issues like this, bcos fantasy can present those "what-if" scenarios. Fantasy can present other races with different agendas, different histories and different moral codes as a "fact" and let the characters (and you!) work out how they should be treated. And the lessons from that spill over very well into RL, where there are many groups of people with different agendas/histories/morals. It's a good complacency-breaking method.

Graham.