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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41578
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41578
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I don't think you need to, and I don't include it. Racism is learned, and often by association with something not caused at all by race (like poverty, and poverty that leads to crime).

Studying racism in sociology (my sister was a sociologist), there are strong indications that "racism" against any visually identifiable minority, across many countries and many centuries, is highly correlated with poverty, lack of education or illiteracy, poor use of the native language, and the low level of jobs the minority is required to work. This holds true even for migrant groups when there was no noticeable racism against the minority before migrancy increased. But once it starts, racism can be a self-perpetuating cycle; the minority cannot get decent jobs, so every generation is mired in poverty, lack of education and low level jobs (even if they gain fluency in the language).

I'd leave out racism. The purpose of children's books is entertainment, you don't have to teach them anything. They want the same thing as adults in their fiction, although it needs to be slightly easier to follow: Adventure, heroics, and an exciting story, and mystery, and magical powers. They turn the pages for the same reason adults do: To see what happens in the next few pages, and in the next chapter, and at the end of the book. (All three of those simultaneously).

The purpose is NOT to teach them about X,Y,Z or racism; the purpose is NOT to show them the pain and despair and injustice of the real world. That is what they are trying to escape! The purpose is to **_entertain_** and make them feel their hero triumphed against the odds through her brilliance and skill, with the help of the friends she would walk through fire for, even that irritating boy.

It's okay to be dark, Harry Potter proves that. But racism is pretty much irredeemably dark and it is not a darkness one can overcome. The hero can defeat a villain, or a crew of villains, but she cannot defeat a billion racists in the world. Even in a book like Harry Potter, you need a happy ending, and if you introduce them to the issues of racism you aren't going to have one. And you will alienate the majority of potential readers, because they are either minorities that have experienced racism, or people that are not minorities but despise racism.

The point is not to reflect the real world. The point is to entertain people, and I see nothing entertaining about racism.

Original score: 0