# Was Tolkien a Racist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 25, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607 "2012-01-25T16:43:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2012, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/81 "2012-01-27T23:26:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Does he ever specify a skin color for any of the protagonists? I’m pretty sure he describes the Southrons fighting against the men from Gondor as swarthy (and with red tongues, not that red tongues are a characteristic of dark-skinned people AFAIK). ---
**Author:** ![Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Ian\_D.Bergkamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ian_D.Bergkamp)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/82 "2012-01-28T01:05:24Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Does he ever specify a skin color for any of the protagonists? Gollum and Sauron are both described as black (Sauron’s hand, anyway, is described as black by Gollum, though I wasn’t clear whether he was being literal or figurative). Having just reread the books, I don’t think Tolkien was a racist, at all. That said, there’s lots of basis for speculation, so I also don’t think it’s a totally unreasonable discussion, if only because Tolkien generally uses the standard metaphors of light=good and black=bad. I don’t see any racial overtones in it, but accept that others might. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/83 "2012-01-28T02:32:56Z")
Note that I said “protagonists”, a word which does not apply to the Southrons, Gollum, nor Sauron. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/84 "2012-01-28T02:47:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Note that I said “protagonists”, a word which does not apply to the Southrons, Gollum, nor Sauron. Bor and his sons, leaders of a group of “swarthy” men, were faithful allies to the elves and dunedain. They perished in battle with Morgoth. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/85 "2012-01-28T05:00:15Z")
> [@Scissorjack](#): > > **GSV** , meet [The Intentional Fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_fallacy); Intentional Fallacy, meet **GSV**. Scissorjack, meet Tolkien (forward to LOTR): > [@](#): > > I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. But in any case, Tolkien was right because he used the word “allegory” to mean a specific thing. Also see my posts [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12816647](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12816647) [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8559897](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8559897). ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/86 "2012-01-28T08:52:44Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > In the context of this thread, the problem is making an objective statement about the author based on an entirely subjective assessment of that author’s works (not that I think you are doing that, of course). > > I can buy that for some reader LoTR is an allegory for WW2 regardless of whether the authour intended it or not, or whether that thing was partly written before the event that it is supposedly an allegory for. That’s all well and good. > > I cannot but that a judgment can be made about the author - such as whether he’s a “racist” or not - based on a totally subjective claim about the work. I regard that issue as something requiring an objective assessment. Yes, it’s generally not an approach I would use if I was interested in biographical material about the author. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/87 "2012-01-28T10:50:25Z")
You know, maybe part of the reason Tolkien’s protagonists fell on the light side of the spectrum was simply the same reason some people have problems telling those of another race apart: I know that for me it’s a lot easier to whip up six different descriptions of white people than of black people. I am more used to analyzing the looks of white people; when I’m describing people from a different ancestry, I may need to think about parts of their face or body that I would not normally describe for a white person - things I don’t even have an adjective for (my adjectives are very limited when it comes to “different shapes of black noses”, for example; I have a wider catalog for white ones). Many (white, as are we) people have a similar problem simply when trying to describe which of my brothers did they run into… telling them apart is relatively easy, but describing them in a differentiated way? Well, let’s see: late 30s, same coloring, same build, same height, same weight but the weight is distributed differently (Middlebro is bonier, Littlebro is rounder) albeit close enough that they borrow each other’s clothes, and Middlebro has a sort of cave-in at the end of his breastbone. Ah but… that cave-in isn’t visible with most clothes, and the only other different point I can express requires me to express it as a comparison. I can’t describe them separatedly in a way that will make them sound different - the whole family has been trying it as a dialectic exercise for over twenty years. Nowadays authors often feel the need to include token characters from races not their own (often without going into detailed descriptions), but back then it wasn’t something that came to mind. You didn’t need to try and ensure that your invented society, in an alternate universe, included a racial makeup that would be politically correct. It’s like complaining that Shakespeare’s works are racist, not because of some of the stereotypes he portrays, but because most of the characters are white. If he’d had a play set in Nubia, people would now complain that actors at the original Globe wore blackface… ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607/88 "2012-01-28T23:35:46Z")
If Tolkien is racist, then almost all fantasy and science fiction is racist. Simply having multiple races with stereotypes is not racism. It’s only racism if the specific stereotypes correspond with real ones, or we have other evidence that the author is a racist. And, in Tolkien’s case, we have evidence to the contrary. Stereotypes exist for a reason. They make storytelling easier. Not every character needs to be fleshed out. Knowing that one group of people are generally bad guys makes it easier to focus on the more important things in the story. It does not mean that the author secretly (or not so much) thinks that there’s some real life racial counterpart. The people claiming _Star Trek_ is racist have more to stand on than this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-tolkien-a-racist/610607.md?page=4)