#tolkien racism

[hippityhoppityyourenowmyproperty]

Yes, it's weird as fuck that you write elves as the most noble, sophisticated race* who are the epitome of beauty and grace and then refuse to give them anything but eurocentric white features and also can't make them anything but model skinny.

[edennill]

I'm often thinking about that one line somewhere in HoME (later writings rather than earlier so likely canon-ish) to the effect that "some of the Bëorians had swarthy skin"...

Because. The word is usually only present in the legendarium in some uncomfortably racialised descriptions of evil-aligned men, but here it's used referring to an unambiguously good and heroic people. It would be, uh, weird on our part to decide it suddenly describes a lighter shade of skin because it refers to non-Easterlings. And. Despite some serious hang ups, Tolkien was actually better than many of his contemporaries and was against white supremacy, antisemitism etc. And it seems he was willing to change his mind if someone pointed out to him/he realised he was doing something wrong. So I wonder.

Was this an attempt at making some rudimentary amends? Was he trying to show he did envisage good "people of colour" in Middle-Earth (*not that the Easterlings were always portrayed as unambiguously evil, but...)? ...

[prokopetz]

The Hobbit in fanon: Hobbits aren't hung up on appearances – the Shire will accept you no matter who you are!

The Hobbit in canon: The outcome of a pivotal confrontation hinges upon the fact that Bilbo just happens to know racial slurs for talking spiders.

[local-redhead-bookworm]

I love how Rings of Power has added depth to Orc culture. I've read a decent number of academic papers on Tolkien for college projects, and one of the things I've read that Tolkien said was that he could not reconcile how his protagonists treated Orcs with the idea that Orcs were fully people, because that would have made the callous manner in which his protagonists kill Orcs in combat wholly unacceptable. It's a moral dilemma he was well aware of, and I'm so glad that they're getting to be people with their own culture. They have mourning rituals, they have familial bonds, and they have kids. They've been inconsequential monsters for too long.

[roselightfairy]

devastating that the Battle of the Pelennor Fields has some of the most breathtaking, gut-clenching writing in all the books . . . and also some of the most overtly vile racist descriptions.

[antiracist-tolkien]

Harad Through Fandom Eyes

Plenty of people acknowledge that LOTR's Haradrim, Easterlings and Variags are racist. However, I've seen less discussion about how fandom adds even more racism into the mix. This seems to be mostly because many people have very little knowledge about West Asia and North Africa, aka WANA [Why say WANA/SWANA instead of Middle East?] and what anti-WANA racism looks like.

I'm going to focus on Harad because this is the region that we know the most about. If you need a brief refresher:

Harad, or Haradwaith, is the region south of Gondor. There's a long history of violence between Harad and Gondor which dates back beyond Gondor even existed, to when Numenorians colonised Harad and repressed the people. Since then there were multiple wars and for long periods of time Gondor occupied parts of Harad. The Haradrim fight for Sauron in LoTR, partially due to their hatred of Gondor.

Harad is divided into two. Near Harad is strongly North Africa coded, and Far Harad is sub-Saharan Africa coded.

(Image description in alt text.)

Tolkien uses multiple different names to refer to the people of Harad (Haradrim, Southrons, Swertings, etc.) However, these seem to be the people of Near Harad, who he differentiates from the people of Far Harad. (There's some serious anti-blackness in this next quote, so skip over it if you need to. I only put it here as evidence that the use of Haradrim/Southrons in LOTR refers to Near Haradrim.)

[...] Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand, Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues. - Return of the King

There is more to say on this than I would be able to fit into this post. There's a discussion to be had about Tolkien's textual and real life relationship with Black people. There's also a discussion that needs to be had about how Tolkien's racism is often excused with the idea that he was a 'benevolent' or well-meaning racist, a product of his time. It's an excuse that ignores the violence of quotations like this and the way that he wielded his whiteness against Black people in academia and writing.

I don't have time or space for those discussions in this post, but I want to acknowledge them.

What I want to discuss here is fandom portrayals of Haradrim. I'm not going to talk too much about the in-text racism, because that has been extensively covered elsewhere. But in summary:

The idea of the good white guys conquering the lesser brown 'Men of Darkness' is inherently racist

Tolkien's description of the Haradrim, such as repeatedly describing them as a cruel and warlike people, is also racist

The one paragraph where Samwise feels empathy for a dead Haradrim soldier does not lessen the racism.

With that out of the way, let's talk about fandom.

There's a gaping void in the information we're given about the Haradrim, so of course fandom attempts to fill the gaps. Fans often take inspiration from WANA. But many fans don't actually know that much about WANA and don't realise how much of their perception of it is based on racist and imperialist propaganda.

In fannish depictions, Harad all too frequently becomes an exotified fantasy that pulls from Western perceptions of WANA. Orientalist ideals of a mystical, magical, and yet dangerous place predominate the fannish idea of Harad.

The first thing that you should know about WANA is that it's an extremely culturally, religiously and geographically diverse place. If your depiction of Harad is entirely desert, or made of a culturally homogenous people with a narrow range of skin tones and features, you need to expand that. Equally, depictions of Harad as more 'socially backward' than other areas of Middle Earth stem directly from racist propaganda.

Too many stories write Harad as misogynistic and homophobic, often in direct contrast to other areas of Middle Earth. As many WANA people have pointed out, these kinds of sweeping generalisations are often specifically targeted at WANA because of racism.

Mysterious cursed objects from the 'far away lands of Harad', decadent sultans, the fetishization of cultural practices like belly dancing; these are all forms of Orientalism. Female characters may be sexualised, shown as seductresses or members of harems. (By the way, Westerners tend to have a very incorrect understanding of what harems actually are/were. They were the part of a Muslim household reserved for women and pre-pubescent boys. It was outsiders who perceived them as fundamentally sexual spaces and created the modern tropes of sexual harems.)

Male characters may be violent, cunning, greedy, dangerous and strange. There may be public executions and enslaved peoples, regardless of the complete absence of a textual basis. All of these things stem directly from racist ideas of WANA as 'barbaric' and 'uncivilised'.

In fact, Haradrim were once enslaved by Numenorians. They were victims of violent colonisation that continued into the days of Gondor. They have every reason to hate the 'Men of the West' and fight against them.

On a final note, the most major and dangerous WANA stereotype is the portrayal of WANA people as terrorists. This isn't a trope seen in Tolkien's works because it's primarily a post-911 phenomenon. But it's something that you must be conscious of if you're writing about Harad or other WANA-coded regions.

[turins-inbred-child]

Nienna about to strangle anyone who says that orcs are unredeemable or shouldn't be pitied.

seeing wayyyyyy to many so called “fans” on twitter saying that orcs are “ontologically evil”. Tolkien was catholic and ontological evil doesn't exist according to catholic doctrine, since evil is defined as the absence of good so pure evil is just nothingness.

also orcs have souls and only God/Eru can create souls according to the silm, and all souls have some amount of free will to choose between good and evil.

and God/Eru loves all his children, he wouldn't create a soul that is going to be evil with no hope of redemption and salvation. that would be a Calvinist heresy.

that is why Tolkien struggled with the origins of the orcs so much in his later writings and regretted how they had been written.

there are a LOT of things to criticize in rings of power, but humanizing the orcs is not one of them.

[sindar-princeling]

'For so we reckon Men in our lore, calling them the High, or Men of the West, which were Númenóreans; and the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight, such as are the Rohirrim and their kin that dwell still far in the North; and the Wild, the Men of Darkness.

listen I love Faramir as much as the next guy but Gondorians' culture is un-fucking-bearable. like girl what the hell

[catwouthats]

No offense, but I don’t believe you guys saying that Tolkien meant allllll of the heroes in lotr to be white (even though some are described as having dark skin) because you seem to have no problem saying that the southlanders (aka people working for Sauron) are black.

I dunno, Aragorn seems to be described in a very native/indigenous/romani way.

I dunno, it’s almost like you “forget” that Tolkien learned about the apartheid in Africa from his mom.

I dunno, it seems like you are only focused on a small part of old European history/history in general and are “forgetting” the rest.

[recently-reanimated]

"Tolkien elves can't be black"

Wrong! To be a tolkien elf you only need 3 things

High cheekbones

Ethereal beauty

Be kind of a prick

[miithriin]

Full thread here.

Context: The actor of the character Arondir, from the series The Rings of Power, Ismael Cruz Córdova revealed that he had to hired an on set therapist to deal with the racist backlash he faced. He also states that his Paypay was hacked, people found out his address, his friends got nasty messages on he himself got death threats.

And of course the #RespectTolkien crowds is loosing their minds again, claiming that all of this is bullshit, he is lying and they won't believe it until he shows 'evidence' that the racist backlash he faced actually existed.

Maybe they should go and check their own posts. (Source post.)

Some time ago when the first images of the Lotr Magic the Gathering Cards were shown and people were livid because Aragorn was black, remember how someone went ahead and "fixed" the art and made him white. There was also a black cosplayer who was got hate for his cosplay as a guard from Numenor because "there are no black people in middle earth!! 😡" And now this. I am really fucking tired of people in this fandom spewing racist bullshit under the thin veil of "providing criticism" and "preserving Tolkien's legacy" and it annoys me off even more how the majority of people either actively ignores it or even goes on to support these people

Also, this isnt an invitation to talk about how much you love/ hate the the Rings of Power. Literally not the point of this post

In addition; if you feel the need to discuss with these people, don't tag Ismael in it, because he has asked specifically to be left out of stuff like that.

[silvergeek]

About Tolkien "fans"....

I've spent the last 25+ years studying Tolkien fans. I thought I was indulging in the books and the fantasy lore but, lo and behold, I was mostly interacting with the other fans. And let me tell you something... the bulk of them are assholes.

The first die hard Tolkien fan I met was a boy in my high school freshman English literature class. The year was 1995. We were all assigned to read The Hobbit and, I would have to agree, 14 years of age is the perfect age to get to reading it if you hadn't started it in middle school.

A boy in my class had already read it, plus the LOTR trilogy, as well as The Silmarillion. What ensued for the rest of that semester was this particular boy dominating class discussions and telling everyone else what was going to happen in the book before we'd reached that chapter. This boy wasn't gifted by any means, just a superfan. I found him annoying by the end of the semester. He nearly ruined the book for me.

I loved reading The Hobbit and that assignment inspired me to read the rest of the LOTR books, but I'll never not associate my introduction to Tolkien with the blathering and nerdsplaining of that loud mouthed teenage boy.

Then, in my early 20's, I met a man. We were, well, married in the early 2000's. (It didn't last. We divorced just four years later.)

He was one of those Tolkien fans who had a monopoly on the franchise. Nevermind that I'd also read the books and saw the original trilogy in theaters. He was The Expert on Tolkien mythos, and don't you forget that. Also, I came to learn that he was a huge racist. He kept that reined in around me, letting it gradually bleed out over the years until he finally dropped all pretenses and voiced every racist thought that crossed his mind.

Oddly, his love of Tolkien was intimately associated with his love of Nordic and Anglo culture, coupled with his unfiltered disdain for African American people. He also boasted that he loved Wagner, a notorious anti-semite, and said it was my first name (I was named after a famous european fairytale that was adapted into one of Wagner's operas) that originally drew him to me.

He made black jokes, jew jokes, dropped n-bombs, the list goes on. The more racist he became, the more he revealed other ugly aspects of himself and the less I loved him -- and eventually grew to loathe him. I filed for divorce and that was that. But he was a preachy, die hard, you-don't-know-Tolkien-lore-better-than-me, nordic pride racist.

Odd, considering Tolkien’s revulsion for Hitler. Anyway...

Moving forward, I have spent the last few months in and out of Tolkien discord chats, mainly observing the others chatting. The "fans". Oh they know their lore. Yes they do. They have it memorized like the holy bible. They fight over concepts of if whether or not orcs were corrupted elves or corrupted men. They revere Tolkien almost like a deity. Some of them have this misguided concept that Tolkien lived in "old England", like "ye olde" with that extra "e" on there and everything. But the truth is that Tolkien died literally ten years before I was born and while The Hobbit was being published, the Three Stooges was playing at the cinema.

Point is, their memories of the lore are photographic, pretentiously spelling Sauron's name like "Þauron" and everything, but their memories and concepts of the author are distorted. It almost reminds me of how American nationalists deify the "founding fathers". (Typically to push some outmoded, traditionalist agenda onto the masses by law.)

When I look back on how much of Tolkien’s work that I've read and enjoyed, from The Silmarillion to The Return of the King, and I look at how many of the adaptations I've watched on screen (the cartoons, the live action trilogy, suffered through the Hobbit films, and now I quite enjoy the Rings of Power), I know deep down that I am a fan because I thoroughly enjoy the content that this world of middle earth has inspired. Whether it inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, Peter Jackson, or the creators of the cartoons as well as the live action Amazon prime series, this world is rife with storytelling possibilities.

Isn't that what stories become? There are so many variations on folk fairy tales in of themselves. Hell, as I mentioned, I was named after one and then centuries later an anti-semite composed an opera about it! No one begrudged him for that.

Greek myths became cartoons, European fantasy folk tales became mass marketed table top games, and an overwhelming number of Japanese lore has been adapted into manga comics, video games, and anime cartoons.

And this trend of human storytelling and adaptation will continue until the sun swallows us up. Yes it will.

And yet... the "hardcore" Tolkien fanbase... it hasn't changed in my lifetime.

At the end of the day, they are still that 14 year old little boy yelling over the class discussion.

[edennill]

there is this strange paradox you encounter while reading Tolkien in which certain peoples are often counted "higher", better than others (which can make modern readers uncomfortable though of course it's true in-world in a way no similar classifications irl have been) and yet, on the other hand. whenever someone wants to discriminate according to those they're shown to be wrong. perhaps they're not always strictly called-out, (though it happens) but either way they tend not to be positive characters and it doesn't seem the author favours their attitude.

anyway it's interesting.

[prokopetz]

Not posting this as a reblog because I don't want to screw with somebody else's notes, but the whole "theological implications of Tolkien's orcs" business has some interesting history behind it.

In brief, a big part of why the Lord of the Rings Extended Universe™ is so cagey about what orcs are and where they come from is that later in his life, Tolkien came to believe that orcs as he'd depicted them were problematic – albeit not because of, you know, all the grotesque racial caricature.

Rather, he'd come to the conclusion that the idea of an inherently evil sapient species – a species that's incapable of seeking salvation – was incompatible with Christian ethics. Basically, it's one of those "used the wrong formula and got the right answer" situations.

In his notes and letters, Tolkien played around with several potential solutions to this problem. (Though contrary to the assertions of certain self-proclaimed Tolkien scholars, there's no evidence that he ever seriously planned to re-write his previous works to incorporate these ideas.) In one proposal, orcs are incarnated demons, and "killing" them simply returns them to their naturally immaterial state; in another, orcs are a sort of fleshy automaton remotely operated by the will of Sauron, essentially anticipating the idea of drone warfare.

Of course, this is all just historical trivia; any criticism of The Lord of the Rings must be directed at the books that were actually published, not the books we imagine might have been published if Tolkien had spent a few more years thinking through the implications of what he was writing. However, the direction of his thoughts on the matter is striking for two reasons:

Tolkien's orc conundrum is very nearly word for the word the problem that many contemporary fantasy authors are grappling with fifty years later. They want epic battles with morally clean heroes, and they're running up against exactly the same difficulty that Tolkien himself did – i.e., that describing a human-like species who are ontologically okay to kill is an impossible task.

After all the work he put into solving this impossible problem, one of Tolkien's proposals was literally just "what if they're not really killing the orcs, they're just sending them to the Shadow Realm?"

[mask131]

Why, oh why must each big or successful fantasy series or work be overtaken by the extreme-right, racist nationalist, and other prejudiced fascists? 

You have Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the ur-work for all the fantasy works that the extreme-right and other massively-prejudiced people heralded as their emblem and banner. A supposedly “purely European (White) work” truly depicting the “evil of Arabs and Jews and Black people” and where no good character should be of color, and where all non-white-European coded characters are inhuman or subhuman... 

... Which becomes really sadly funny when you know that Tolkien was a fervent enemy of the Nazis and their ideology, as much on the battleground that in terms of scholar work ; that while he did embrace the oversimplification typical of old Norse saga and Greek epics, he was sincerely bothered - as a Christian who believed in the natural goodness in every mortal and the possibility of redemption and free will for everyone - that people could interpret his work as “Some species are born bad and evil and that’s just their nature” ; and that while he did depict the only characters of true “color” being killed as nameless hordes of enemy at the end, he also explicitely placed scenes where they are humanized, taken pity on, and where he clearly highlights that these scenes are meant to depict the horror and tragedy of war, of conflict between humans torn apart by absurd and evil reasons, instead of any “racial attack”. (No need to tell you these scenes tend to be rolled under the carpet by the neo-Nazi supporters of Tolkien’s work - because yes, there ARE neo-Nazi fans of the Lord of the Rings, which is an anti-Nazi work written by a famous enemy of the Nazis!)

You have Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and the recent attempt after his death by transphobes to take over his books and claim sir Pratchett would have been against transgenders...

... When Terry Pratchett literaly wrote dozens of books highlighting through subtle, clever and humoristic metaphors (and, as time went by, less subtle and more obvious and blunt plot points), how queerness and transness was something that existed, that was natural, and that needed to be embraced and supported. 

You have the Witcher, that is being praised by nasty people as being a purely Polish work, exclusively about Polish people and Polish culture, and that thus should only be for white people and about white people ; the same people that love how it “embraces” and “supports” the traditional, old-time values, and use a lot of “pure” in their speech. 

... When in fact The Witcher is a work that purposefully blurs time eras and various cultures (including non-European works) because Sapkowski’s intentions were never to make a “purely Polish work” ; and it is also a work where the author subtly (or not so subtly) criticizes the political right-movement, conservative groups and so called “supporters of the Slavic culture” (who mostly are just fantasizing a supposed “old Slavic society and culture” that never truly existed beyond minds that clearly did not read actual history books). I won’t even mention how Sapkowski is not a fan at all of “historical realism” in magical and fantasy worlds, and openly rejects this logic by purposefully having anachronisms or having modern scientific notions (like genetic mutation) be widespread and well-known in his “medieval” setting. 

The list could go on and on. I’ll just keep however these three most highlighted examples, because they are very telling. 

It is almost as if the racist fans of the early 20th century fantasy pulps - those of Lovecraft and Conan the Barbarian and the like - had survived throughout the decades, gaining an unnaturaly long life clinging to the outdated and badly-aging tropes, stereotyped plots and cultural references, and acted today like some sort of perverted racist, transphobes, homophobes liches, only here to soil and corrupt everything they touch with their blind, prejudiced, hateful and idiotic poison... 

[roselightfairy]

Yeah, those silly folk of Dunland who haven’t forgotten how Gondor took their lands and gave them to Rohan a whole five hundred years ago, who eagerly joined forces with a guy promising to take down their colonizers. Their anger is SO blown out of proportion.