Blood purity (Harry Potter)

Blood purity is a concept in the fictional Harry Potter book series. It is a form of class prejudice and also has analogies to racism.

Categories by Blood

The wizarding world is divisible into three main classes by purity: pure-blood, half-blood, and muggle-born. The term half-blood may be used as an insult, particularly from a pure-blood wizard. The term mud-blood is a severe insult describing someone with no wizarding ancestors.

Related Topics:
Wizarding world - Pure-blood - Half-blood - Muggle-born

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Pure-blood

Pure-blood wizards have no Muggles whatsoever in their genealogical pedigree, or have deluded themselves over the generations that this is the case. The few remaining families are all interconnected. Over the course of the series, several prominent families the reader is introduced to subsequently die out, thus limiting the pure-blood gene pool even further.

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J.K. Rowling, in response to fan questions, has said that to be considered pure-blood, one's grandparents must have all been wizards. She also mentioned that some of the more severe schools of thought may require several more generations of wizards to be considered pure-blood.

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The strongest proponents of blood purity are unsurprisingly pure-blood themselves. (A notable exception is Lord Voldemort, whose mother was a pure-blood witch and whose father was a Muggle.)

Related Topics:
Lord Voldemort - Mother - Witch - Father

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By no means is pure-blood status a guarantee of a person's attitude. Attitudes do tend to run in families as children are brought up to support their parents' views, but even families that consider Muggle marriage disgraceful and immoral have their black sheep.

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Blood traitor

A blood traitor is a derogatory term for a pure-blood who does not consider blood purity to be of any importance. This label has been applied to the Weasley family and Sirius Black.

Related Topics:
Weasley family - Sirius Black

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Half-Blood

Half-bloods are wizards that are not muggle-born, but whose heritage includes one or more muggle

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grandparent(s). That is, if a person has 25% or greater muggle heritage, than they are disqualified from being a pure-blood. Half-bloods are the most common kind as the magical folk would have dwindled to extinction without marrying Muggles. Blood purity fanatics regard half-bloods as an inferior kind of wizard, though they think of them as superior to muggle-born wizards.

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Muggle-born

Muggle-borns are the occasional witches and wizards born to Muggle parents. What causes them is unknown, likely due to the intentional obscurity of magic's technical details. Though their magical abilities do not seem to be significantly affected, in fact many have been among the most powerful, blood purity fanatics regard them as little maybe even no better than the sub-wizard Muggles and they are the most persecuted type of magical persons.

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Mudblood is a highly insulting expression, meaning "dirty blood", for a Muggle-born that clearly identifies the user as prejudiced. The term Mudblood is comparable to the word "Nigger" used towards people of African descent in America.

Related Topics:
Nigger - African

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