this is a fictional universe with their own customs of what is good, and yes some rooted in the ideas and thought of that time by the author.
I think that is the sort of thing that is up to the world designer. And I think if we insist one way or another, it removes a lot of possibilities, not because those possibilities are themselves racist, but because there is possibility they could be in some cases.
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fantasy worlds are thought experiments
If someone wants to write a story in which savage dark-skinned predators lust after virginal pale-skinned damsels, of course that's their prerogative. But if they get called out for deploying blatanly racist imagery, who's going to have much sympathy for them?
JRRT is not egaged in a "though experiement: -
Gee, what would it be like to imagine all the good people being fair-skinned and all the evil people being swarthy, so that their loyalties and morality were literally written on their faces? He is writing a story where he draws on ideas that he finds ready-to-hand, and these include the tropes of swarthy, "slant-eyed", scimitar-wielding Asiatic hordes.
You don't get a free pass on deploying ready-to-hand racist tropes simply because you stipulate that your story is about an imaginary place. (Especially when, in JRRT's case, its actually not about an imaginary place at all but about an imagined pre-historic Earth.)
Because 'colonialist propaganda parrallel' isn't something that most people think when they see an image of a D&D orc for the first time.
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its the sort of thing you need to be educated into believing before you will generally see it as a problem.
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divide between the people with an advanced education and those who don't have one
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But if someone makes a game with an evil goblinoid creature, is it really that bad of a thing?
If someone wants to produce an opera in which two of the primary antagonists are portrayed as short, unattractive, inspid and money-grubbing, is that really that bad of a thing? Well, some people think that those dwarves in Wagner's most famour opera are an anti-Semitic caricature. Do you not agree? Then knock yourself out producing The Ring. Will some people decline to come and see it because they object to what they see as racist tropes? Probably - do you think they're
obliged to share your opinion of the matter?
Are there ways of producing The Ring that try to downplay or ameliorate possible hints of anti-Semitism? Clearly yes. But it won't occur to someone to do this if they don't think about the issue in the first place.
As far as your claims about "advanced education" are concerned, frankly they're nonsense. People don't need advanced education to notice racist tropes as part of their larger life experience. Youug children of colour - who obviously have not benefitted from advanced education - do this day-in, day-out.
I get that you are pointing to an academic debate on this topic, but most people are not steeped in that debate.
I have many people whom I'm close to for whom this is not an academic debate. It's real life. Just asn one example: some people I know, as primary school kids, had to confront questions and expectations about jungles and headhunters and the like. Unsurprisingly, none of these people is white.
The fact that you continue to disregard this
despite having had multiple posters (not just me) make the point makes me doubt your broader protestations of good intentions.
