Is Lord of the Rings Racist?

Thanks to my patrons!!!

Sources:

Branston, B. (1957). The Lost Gods of England. London: Thames and Hudson.

Chance, J. (1979). Tolkien’s Art: A ‘Mythology for England’. London & Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

Humphrey, C. (1977). Tolkien: a biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Shipley, T. (1982). The Road to Middle-Earth. Allen & Unwin.

Shippey, T. (2004). "Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel". In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

St Clair, G. (1996). "An Overview Of the Northern Influences on Tolkien's Works". Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, v. 21, no. 2, Article 13.

Stuart, R. (2022). Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth. Palgrave Macmillan.

Tolkien, J. (1932, 1934). "Sigelwara Land". Medium Aevum, v.1 no.3 & v.3 no.2.

See also:

Sinex, M. (2010). "Monsterized Saracens," Tolkien's Haradrim, and Other Medieval "Fantasy Products". Tolkien Studies, v. 7, no. 1, p 175-196.

Written and created by K Klein
Art by kvd102

[rowanalexandriabennett]

Proud to be a sponsor of such a thoughtful and insightful video!

[paulamarina]

while the worldbuilding itself is undeniably inspired by england and norse mythology, i always got the impression that the actual storytelling in lotr was heavily influenced by tolkiens experiences as a ww1 soldier. you can see it in the way sauron, the ultimate bad guy in the story, doesnt even show up at any point, the heroes never ever see him just like how ww1 never actually got to see the ultimate bad guy leading the enemy nation. likewise, while the heros do get to see the enemy army up close, they only get to see them as this massive wave of evil soldiers, they cant know them as individuals, they cant make friends with them, they cant think of them as anything other than an massive wave of evil soldiers. only sometimes will they allow themselves to look at a fallen soldier and wonder what the mans 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 rather stayed there in peace.

thank you for making this btw, loved the video!!!

[TakaD]

I remember my grandmother saying to me: I don’t care what they tell you in school, Frodo was black.

[FueganTV]

Sam's compassion isn't 'modern', it's timeless.

[MarshallTheArtist]

I'm a little disappointed that this video essay doesn't mention the commentary in the books about how the orcs of Mordor loath their lord Sauron, nor of the conflicts between the orcs, which are described in the books.

[Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

A video with a sponsor that isn't just a random thing with no connection to the video; a video with an actual fitting sponsor?

[stilltoomanyhats]

8:30 This bit about how we would interpret the same words differently as written by Tolkien vs some ancient Anglo-Saxon reminds me of Borges' short story of Don Quijote being rewritten word for word by a modern Frenchman and how that results in an entirely different work

[The.Raxing]

I would like to point out, not to dismiss your point but to add to it another perspective, that Tolkien also borrowed a lot from Finnish mythology and language (everyone knows the Evlish language borrowed a lot from Finnish, and Gandalf for instance has clear parables to Väinämöinen), but when Tolkien wrote his books, Finns were seen as "oriental", and a common slur for Finnish people was "China Swedes" up until the early 1940s. So although one of the antagonist groups got their influence from asiatic people, there are "asiatic" (as seen at the time) influences on "the good" side as well. I think this gives more credence to the idea that Tolkien wasn't personally racist, though that doesn't mean that his work couldn't be, and his work has been used to push racist ideas (though this in itself doesn't mean that a work is racist, racist are idiots and don't necessarily understand the works they are co-opting).

[VagabondRetro]

My only problem is that the idea of empathy is treated as modernistic. You can find all sorts of examples throughout history of people voicing sympaties for other peoples, even if it wasn't in the way we do now. Sam's thoughts are completely realistic for the time and culture he grew up in.

[VasiliyOgniov]

IIRC there was a mention of the fact that Easterlings and Haradrim did not exactly *chose* the dark side. They were taken by force by leaders who were corrupted and given power by Sauron. I mean, two of the Mages (the unnamed blue ones) just fucking disappeared after they went to the East, so darkness must be kinda rampant in those places and since we know that ALL humans are good by nature we could assume that shit went south in the South and East.

I may or may not be pulling this out of my ass tho because for the love of God I can't remember where I heard that and was it even canon at all

[EnRandomSten]

At least for me I've always found it important to look at the intent of someones work. When you read the passage in a modern context, sure it *can* be read as racist simply due to the skin colour but you have to ask if that is the intent to Tolkien writing it.

My first thought that comes to mind are svartalfr from norse mythology, literally called black elves and are almost categorically evil in all appearances yet most people can agree that its probably not born from a racist intent but rather a way for a skald or poet to inject some mystery and otherness in their story.

Another important note is the perspective the book is written in which is that of the men of the west. In universe they would lack sufficient knowledge of the haaradrim (or how its spelt sorry) to have more than a almost mythical image of them. I dont think the men of the east are ment as a literal people of pitch black skin etc as we see pther characters with ambiguous skin colour in the west (Aragorn being a prime example), but rather as a skewed retelling similar to the romans describing the brittons as "slow people who live in lakes of mud".


Sorry rant over

[coracorvus]

The line about orcs looking like the "least-lovely mongol-types" doesn't really help either

[samthellama]

Just commenting on Sam’s line, what I always took away from the stories were that the big battles etc were based around big myths with a simple lens that represents the old mythology from one point of view. But Sam and Frodo are the non myths that aren’t simple, and eventually forgotten by the myths so they are more real. But 🤷🏻‍♂️

[dayalasingh]

I always interpreted the people of Harad as more an analogue to Arab people than black people but I don't think that fundamentally changes much.

[Jowiime]

Something of note is that Tolkien himself believed that the Blue Wizards might have helped out in the Eastern Lands and prevented the “dark” people from all falling to Sauron’s influence. In fact without their help there might have been a ton more Easterlings and Southerners the main characters would’ve had to contend with and their win likely wouldn’t have been possible.

Anyways this does imply he saw them as real people and redeemable. His entire viewpoint actually was that everyone was redeemable and it’s one of the reasons why he grappled so much with the origins of the Orcs, I don’t think he believed anything in the Legendarium was truly 100% evil or irredeemable. It’s for these reasons I don’t think Tolkien intended for it to be racist to be honest and I think even as you put, it’s quite a bit more complicated than black = bad = racism.

[ashwinnmyburgh]

Way I saw it was that the Haradrim are seen from the perspective of the men of the northern areas. They are deemed evil and dark because they side with Sauron, but this doesn't mean they actually ARE evil. They are, much as you said in the video, seen through the sort of eyes an Anglo-Saxon would have looked through when thinking of Africa, or China. Strange, unknowable, foreign and usually subversive. This, however, does not make this view true, and indeed, to my mind at least, the scene with Sam, where he looks on the body of the dead Harad man, proved as much. In that scene, we are struck by the realization that these are men, human beings just like us, and that they have been brought here, likely coerced in some fashion, or tricked, into servitude. We do not know whether the Haradrim hate their master, whether they rebel against him, and while I think a Haradrim character would have been awesome, we do not get this in the story since, as you stated, it ultimately has nothing to do with the story as a whole. It could just be me, and my reading of the book, but to me, Tolkien proved himself not to be a racist by that beautiful scene. That he even took the time to write it, to make the reader feel for what could have easily been left a faceless evil thrall, to me speaks volumes.

I will premise this, though, with the statement that Tolkien's world was different from our own, and he was a product of that world, and thus, even if he had not intended any hateful message, it is possible that he was influenced by the prevailing views of the time. I am not trying to say that Tolkien, as much as I love his works, was a perfect man, indeed no human ever can be, but I honestly do not agree with views of him being racist.

[JHJHJH]

There seem to be a lot of people who end up at one of two extremes:

On the one hand, there are those who focus solely on their immediate experience as readers, so much so that they don't really seem to think of fictional characters and events as fictional constructs at all. "The Haradrim could have had civil wars, " is a perfectly natural thought to have as you read, but those types of hypotheticals can't form the basis of an interpretation that's meaningful to anyone else but yourself, and so they are quite useless in discussions with others. To those who _only_ read stories like this, and never move on to a more distanced approach, it might not be very easy to see stories as part of the culture they're in. They're self-contained things, and that's it. But a literary work will always be part of a larger context, in several ways; it literally can't _not_ be.

On the other hand, there are those who contextualize stories not only to view a particular work in the context of its past or present culture, but also to label it as e.g. "dangerous, " "decadent, " categorically "problematic, " etc. -- perhaps to promote the idea that literary works should be _in service of_ society somehow. This takes many forms, but all have in common a general failure to think of art as art, in favor of some more instrumental approach.

I think it's important to be aware of how you tend to read stories and then find a more constructive balance between different ways to approach them. It's crucial to acknowledge that even seemingly contradictory ideas and analyses can all be true or valid at once.

[Loy_]

Im sure this video wont be any controversial at all. And that the comments will be completely in good faith :)

[HJfod]

This was a really interesting analysis. I love looking at the works of past authors and seeing what that work says about them and their time. I don't think Tolkien intended to be racist at any point writing LOTR, but it definitely does reflect how the world around him was at that time, and how attempts at escaping societal norms often come up futile. It will be very interesting to see how the authors of today, writing books with subtle choices that no one would bat an eye to nowadays, will be regarded by people 100 years from now. Perhaps they will live at a time past climate catastrophy and newfound scarcity, where our current careless approach to consumerism will be seen as (for the lack of a more refined term) evil.

Love your videos, keep making them

[ΦραγκούληςΠέτρος]

Ok fair warning, REALLY long comment coming up! See, I love Tolkien's work dearly, but have often struggled with let's say, our differnt political and ideological views. Now, let's start:
-It is downright silly to expect an Englishman born and raised in colonial South Africa, and deeply indoctinated in christianity, to conform to 2024 standards of political correctness and sensibilities
-Tolkien often makes a point about "clean bloodlines" eg Aragorn's impeccable pedigree, but, at the same time, in the Gondor civil war I think his sympathies were clearly against the Castamiri who wanted a pure-blooded Numenorian on the throne
-There is absolutely no mention of the lineage of men who first turn to Morgoth being black or anything like that
-The black Numeroreans who worshipped Sauron were not called black because of any external physical characteristic
-The Southrons only turned to Sauron because of the threat of numenorian colonialism, which brings us to the next point...
-Tolkien wrote of his dislike of both the Roman and the British empires. By the standards of his day, such an anti-imperialist view was almost extreme! I think he deeply belived in the "civilising mission" of colonialism, that is first and foremost the spread of Christianity and maybe some basic infrastructure. He was deeply suspicious of technological progress, so I don't think he believed Africa missed out out on anything by not having any factories etc.
-His descriptions of other nations is more "exotic" or "orientalist" than racist. Of course the first time you saw a black person you would be shocked, just as much as a black person would be shocked upon encountering white skinned, blue-eyed European for the first time. There is nothing wrong with admitting that we cannot understand everyone and everything
-While racism takes many forms as time progresses (divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book), race as we understand it nowadays only appeared as late as the 16th century, as a justification for colonialism. Check out the History of England podcast, ep. 301 "Black Tudors" for some very intresting details