I’ve been seeing a lot of discourse on social media about J.R.R. Tolkien’s work being racist, and or anti-semitic. I’d like to dismiss that notion, so much as it can be, with a few key points.

He wrote a letter firmly dismissing the notion when the Nazi’s asked him about his position on race before publishing his works in German.

Here’s the article, which includes the full text of the letter. Read it and come back before discussing the dwarves with me below.

https://www.good.is/articles/jrr-rolkien-nazi-letter

As to racism in the Lord of the Rings…note that while the dwarves might be based, in some sense, on the Jewish people, or at least their language is, the dwarves are portrayed as hardy, mostly heroic, highly resistant to corruption. While some of them are greedy or prideful….so is every single race, including humans and elves, depicted in the Hobbit. They all come to the Battle of Five Armies for the dragon’s gold, and only work together once the orcs arrive. Gimli, in the Lord of the Rings, is a stalwart, incorruptible warrior who in the course of the story unlearns his racist assumptions about elves. If you missed that, I don’t know what to tell you. Legolas learns to let go of his racist assumptions about dwarves.

Orcs. Everyone freaks out about orcs. They are not an analogy for brown skinned people. Brown skinned people exist in the world, in the text. The Woodwoses come to mind as heroic, if primitive, people. Orcs are the descendants of elves, corrupted by an evil god. There is no real world comparison, only a mythological one. Orcs can be compared to the Fomor of Irish myth, to goblins all over Europe…which are not people. They are supernatural entities representing concepts and themes of the Other, and of Evil, and of mischief. What they are not is any kind of real species. By species, in Tolkien, they are elves. Still immortal, as shown by the orcs in Mordor who remember the Last Alliance because they were there. Elves, likewise, are not people in the way humans are, but lesser earthbound spirits like the Norse Alfar upon whom they are based, and the English faeries that developed from those and from the Tylwyth Teg of the Welsh and Britons. Even hobbits are expressly depicted as a ‘faerie’ folk in the Hobbit. Reread their description. Orcs, then, are earthbound minor demons, if anything. Fallen, or dragged, from grace, like their first master Morgoth and their new master Sauron.

What of all the brown people who work for Sauron, you ask? Well, they are conquered people. It is shown over and over again that all the men of Middle-Earth are vulnerable to corruption, to being forced into servitude, to being conscripted. That is why the heroes fight Sauron, to keep that from happening to the West. Boromir, greatest warrior of Man in the 3rd Age ( Dunedain are something else, as they descend from both elves and literal angels (Maiar)), is shown as vulnerable to the power of the ring. Most of the Ringwraiths were Westron men. Grima Wormtongue, a man of Rohan. Any number of Men who helped Saruman invade the Shire. And though he is not man, but Angel, let us not forget that Saruman, greatest of the Istari, one of the Maiar, fell to Sauron’s corruption.

I also have evidence from the text itself.

In the Two Towers, book 4, chapter 4, Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit, pg 269 in my old black cloth copy, we find the following passage:

“Then suddenly straight over the rim of their sheltering bank, a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.

It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. 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—all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.”

This clearly denotes that while the men of Gondor are racist, calling the men of Harad ‘ever ready to Sauron’s will’ and naming the black men of Far Harad ‘half-trolls’…these are not the sentiments of the author, for the Hobbits are always his POV. Sam acknowledges the humanity of the foe, and wonders what lies he was told, or threats were made, to bring him here. Sam sees his humanity, and is glad he cannot see the face, because it would force him to think about the death of a person even more. It is a comment on soldiers in war, yes. But very clearly shows that Tolkien thinks of the brown man of Harad as just another person, a soldier.

Are orcs racist in D&D? Sometimes. That’s a different story.