Racist Against Wizards

In the book Magyk by Angie Sage, wizards, who were once prosperous, are treated as scum who are worthless and must be punished for who they are. They are kicked around and Magyk is treated as if it is a disease that must be exterminated. This reminds me of discrimination that is going on in the world today as well as discrimination that happened in the past.

            In the beginning of the book, most wizards lead fairly normal, productive lives. One of the gatekeepers even talks about how the ExtaOrdinary, wizard, the most powerful wizard, has class. Then the Custodians take over and everything changes. Suddenly, highly respected wizards are “wizard scum” and having the telltale, green wizard eyes automatically marks you for scrutiny. The Custodians even tried to beat this idea of hating wizards into their children creating mean and hateful rhymes about the ExtraOrdinary wizard. The rhyme mentioned in the book talks about the ExtraOrdinary wizard being crazy. One of the characters, Boy 412, realizes something important when he finally meets actual wizards. The wizards are not the crazy ones, the people who write the rhyme are. This part in particular made me think of the holocaust. In the holocaust Jews were portrayed as greedy thieving evil people. Some people knew that the stereotype was untrue and risked their lives to save people. Those who knew that this stereotype wasn’t true knew the truth. They knew that the Jews were not the evil ones, the Nazis were.

            The holocaust was an extreme example of discrimination. I cannot even begin to understand the amount of hate and insanity it must take for one group to hate another so much that they no longer want to live on the same planet as them. There is nothing that one group can do to provoke enough hate to make that response excusable.

About a year ago, in Arizona there was an immigration law passed that said that Police Officers could stop and ask for the papers of anyone who looks like they might be here illegally. This law is basically legalizing discrimination because there is no way to look at someone and determine whether they are here illegally. There are illegal immigrants in this country from all over. However, only people that look Hispanic are going to be stopped. There are ways to stop illegal immigration without harassing people because of their skin color.

Of course, wizards aren’t real, but the problems in this book are serious. Unfortunately, there will always be people out there who will insist on discriminating against someone so they can feel better about themselves or blame someone else for their problems. What we can do, however, is keep these people from controlling the media, or passing laws like the one in Arizona. If we can do that, then we are on the right track.