TheCosmicKid
Hero
An argumentative response, not a productive one.No, that's not how we end up with misunderstandings. If I say Tolkien's racial patterns are deeply problematic, that's not "sit{ting} around calling each other racist." It is a statement directed at the writings of someone, and even if you ignore the ellipsis and claim I'm calling Tolkien racist, that's still not "each other".
Tolkien was born in what is now South Africa, although he would have had little memory of his life there as he moved to England permanently at age three.Source? I'm not necessarily going to buy that comment, seeing as most Englishman would have no little to no contact with the Empire at large. To the average Englishman, I except the Empire was little more than an abstract concept and, possible, a source of exoticism. Most of the English population, I would assume had little knowledge of the horrors which occurred throughout the larger empire except under the obscuring lens of British propaganda.
Woses: Skin color not specified, but clearly a different race than the humans of Gondor and Rohan. Material culture seems to resemble Amazonian tribes. Longtime victims of persecution because of their perceived ugliness. Implied to be the descendants of the people who inhabited the whole area before the Rohirrim, um, "moved in". Sympathetic and on the side of the heroes.I think more troubling than orcs is that all the non-white humans (say, Haradrim and Easterlings) are all Sauron's minions.
There is a frequently-overlooked recurring theme in Tolkien about the grievances and concerns of the forgotten peoples, the little guys. You see it in the Woses, the Ents, and even the Hobbits themselves.
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