This was a perfectly reasonable answer cloaked in an unessary criticism - especially when it's rather difficult without the author present to determine if he really was racist or simply a better-than-average writer who knew how to push readers' buttons. Delete the first four (useless) sentences, and you've an answer that will stand on its own.

The person who asked the question didn't understand what the phrase "Tolkien style" races means or how they work. I think an explanation as to why Tolkien's races worked the way they did serves to clarify the answer better.

If you really want that part of your answer, then maybe a reasonable middle ground would be to move it from the beginning to the end of the answer. That would shift the answer's focus a fair bit while still saying much the same thing.

You got a point. I'm also not trying to rip on Tolkien too hard, I'm sure we got lots of "facts" today that will be seen in an equally negative light 100 years from now.

I don't have any interest in trying to put a label on Tolkien. One problem a writer today is going to face when trying to write "Tolkienesque" or D&D-like fantasy is that a lot of pastiches and critics over the years have made a very explicit analogy between the real-world racial stereotypes of the authors' milieus and the racial essentialism in their work. The Message of Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is that it sounds to him like something Hitler would write. Many make the Orcs into oppressed good guys, to the point where that's become a cliché . It's hard to avoid those associations.

@TCAT117 Sure. One of my examples is nearly fifty years old, and wasn't the first to make that particular analogy.

Even if you don't see it as a flaw that the way the orcs are usually dehumanized is very reminiscent of the way some people dehumanize other groups of people, it's not a deep or complex or original theme. They're just so innately inferior in every way, they're not even cool villains or worthy adversaries. If you're going to put your own spin on High Fantasy, coming up with a more original take on them and their perspective on things is a natural fit.

I don't know that you could really call Tolkien racist, at least WRT orcs, as orcs (and elves, dwarves, ents &c) are not humans. For a real-world parallel, take say dogs vs coyotes and wolves: while they share common ancestry (close enough to interbreed), they are different species, with different natural behaviors.

I'd also add that I remember reading Tolkien was torn about having an "always evil" race, and clarified that "good" orcs were possible, just exceedingly unlikely because they'd not survive the brutality of orkish society.

@Miller86 He actually in the Letters said that they can't wholly be evil though there are some subtleties so you're right.

@JBH You do know about the Kinslaying, right? Do you also know about their folly with wanting to be superior race in the world but also have it like Valinor? And you do know the original Dark Lord came from the North and not the East or South? There's a tactical reason too why Sauron was in the latter: because he had to be far from the West and after Sauron manipulated the Númenóreans to attack the West the world geography was changed drastically. The Elves woke up in the East btw.

@JBH (and the OP) never mind of course his views on Hitler and his letter suggesting the Jews were a gifted people... Oh and his point that the Allies had no right to systematically exterminate the Germans because they have just as much right as the Nazis did - in other words no right whatever they have done.

You got most of it correct, but the bit about Tolkien being somehow “racist” or claiming that West was better than East or South mostly came from people who took glancing notice of the geography and didn't look at the why or how. Orcs were inferior because they were initially made that way. Most people — not simply the Easterlings or the Southrons — were not too nice. Tolkien was making a semi-celtic British mythology with Western lands of paradise, so the people escaping Númenor were the only ones who had any smidgen of goodness. More or less. Maybe a tad Anglocentric, but not racist.

@can-ned_food: If you look at the group Tolkien based the language & behavior of his orcs on, it's the white "louts and layabouts" of urban Britain of the time. Culturally elitist, perhaps, but hardly racist. OTOH, Sam at least feels sympathy for the (black) casualties of Faramir's ambush: "He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace..."

@jamesqf Yeah! OT, but that was one of my favorite passages.

But what about the Uruk-hai? I'd imagine that's the specific sort of "Tolkienesque" orc Pinion is referring to.

@can-ned_food you are aware that "[insert race here] are inferior because they were initially made that way" is a pretty common justification for racism right? I don't think Tolkien set out to write a racist story but it's not unreasonable to suggest that "swarthy enemies are inherently evil" is a problematic aspect of his world

@apteryx: But orcs (and dwarves, ents, &c) aren't a different race of men, they're a different species. (Though perhaps one closely-related enough to be hybridized by Saruman with the aid of tech/magic.) Compare with canids: civilizing an orc is like trying to keep a wolf or coyote as a house pet. (Or perhaps like the Chinese family who, after two years, finally figured out that their Tibetan Mastiff puppy was in fact a bear :-))

@TCAT117, Tolkein's point was that only God can create life. Just as Morgoth couldn't create the orcs from nothing, Aulë's attempt to create life in the form of the dwarves failed. It's not "good versus evil" that's the distinction, it's "God versus not-God".

@can-ned_food i'm well aware that's what happened. just because it's justified in the fiction does not mean it's a good way to look at the world. so I guess I take your point that the protagonists of LotR are not racist but their author still created a world where scary dark people are inherently evil...

@can-ned_food when someone makes a reasonable observation that Tolkien was a product of his time and a dozen fanboys jump down their throat, who's really doing the trolling here?

also orcs are: scary ☑️ black-skinned ☑️ inherently evil ☑️. not sure what Tom Bombadil looking like an apple man has to do with it

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