The Lord of the Rings:
Tolkein as a Racist?

            Before getting into the possible racism of the Lord of the Rings, it would be best to give a quick synopsis of what happened in the book::

Vol. I - THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING:
The story starts with the twentieth birthday-party for Frodo Baggins, a Hobbit who lives with his brother Sam in a mythical land called the Shire. Frodo owns a magic Ring which makes him invisible when he wears it, a gift from his cousin Bilbo who stole it from the hoard of a Dragon years ago.
    One day the old wizard Gandalf comes to the Shire, and he tells Frodo of an evil being named Sauron who wants to capture the Ring for himself. In ages long past Sauron stole the Ring from the Elves, to protect him from the Powers of Good; but the Ring was stolen from him by a creature named Gollum,and then stolen from Gollum by the Dragons, and then from the Dragons by Bilbo, who finally gives it freely to Frodo. "Sauron has been searching for the Ring for years," Gandalf tells Frodo, "and now he has sent his ally, the evil Witch-king, to the Shire to look for it." Frodo and Sam consult with their loyal friends Merry and Pipsqueak, and when the evil Witch-king appears with his nine servants the clever hobbits trick them into going into a mushroom-patch, disorienting the witches just long enough to escape the Shire.
    But the tone of the book rapidly becomes more serious as the Witch-king and his evil servants pursue the hobbits through the forest. Frodo discovers that the witches have destroyed the village of Bree, and the Witch-king uses a magic spell to burn down the home of their old friend Tom Bombadil. Frodo, horrified, wants to go back and fight the evil witches, but at a hill called Weathertop he meets a noble man named Aragorn who convinces him to go to the city of Rivendell. "In Rivendell you will be safe from their magic," Aragorn tells him, "for Elrond is a sensible man, and does not believe in it." With that Aragorn leads them rapidly to Rivendell, with the witches in hot pursuit. As they ford the last river between them and Rivendell the Witch-king casts a spell on the river-water, causing it to rise up and try to drown them; only Frodo's quick thinking can save them, and he uses the power of the Ring to make all the water evaporate into fog. The fog is so thick that the Witch-king and his servants become hopelessly lost, and our heroes make it to the safety of Rivendell.
    At Rivendell, Elrond holds a Council where the fate of the Ring is discussed. The only way to keep Sauron from recovering the Ring, they decide, is to throw it into the volcano of Mount Doom where it will be destroyed. During the Council Gandalf arrives late, saying that he had been held prisoner in the tower of Orthanc, the Wizards' Tower. Curiously, he refuses to describe how he escaped. "But it is more important than ever that we destroy the Ring," Gandalf says, "for now the other Wizards know of it, and seek it as well." He tells of how the dark wizard Saruman, once an ally of the forces of Good, has turned to evil and now controls Orthanc with an iron hand, and how the other Wizards are roaming the countryside seeking the Ring for themselves. They all agree to set out to destroy the Ring at once.
    Gandalf and Aragorn agree to go with the four Hobbits, as does Glorfindel, a descendant of the ancient ruler Ar-Pharazon, and Boromir, from the Royal House of Gondor; also joining them are an Elf and a Dwarf who don't really do much in the story but are there for comic relief. Together Gandalf and his nine companions - the "Fellowship of the Ring", as they call themselves - set out for the dark land of Mordor.
    On the way, their path is repeatedly beset by evil forces. First they are attacked by evil Orcs in the woods; next they are driven into the dark forest of Lothlorien, where they are imprisoned by the beautiful but evil Queen Beruthiel. They make their escape when Beruthiel's good sister, Galadriel, frees them from their prison-cell and floats them down the river in barrels. After that they think it best to leave the woods and head to Moria, the secret city under the mountains; here, however, they face a terrifying setback when they are found by the evil wizard Radagast. Gandalf sacrifices his life to destroy Radagast the Balrog, and the others escape the mountains while the battle rages. At the end of the book, however, the Fellowship is destroyed from within; Glorfindel, lusting for power, tries to kill Frodo for the Ring. Aragorn stops Glorfindel by shooting him through the throat with a black arrow; Glorfindel dies, but not until he maliciously sets fire to the grasslands. In the resulting smoke and confusion the Fellowship of the Ring is hopelessly scattered.
                                                            ---http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/homework.htm

        With the basic story-line now covered, now a closer look can now be taken.  Racism and its forms are from concealed in the work of JRR Tolkein. White good guys and black bad guys does not leave room for much discussion.  However, in order to view the topic in a judicious manner, a closer examination should be considered.  However, the good = white and evil = black stereotype, while still one that should cause some concern to the logic-minded person, was not one that Tolkein himself created. It's actually an old theme. So where is the true racism in the Lord of the Rings?   

        Elves and hobbits: white, pure, and always good.  Orcs: motley, dark and generally near-black in color, and always evil. The orcs, who have at times been considered to be fallen elves, are a horde of unattractive, black, slant-eyed, beasts that are seemingly incapable of articulated speech and are psychologically underdeveloped.  The elves and hobbits on the other hand are generally handsome--beautiful in the case of the elves--are white in color,  and are not only capable of higher levels of thinking but are remarkably intelligent or wise.  As the term "horde" might denounce, the orcs tend to be somewhat disorganized, though their leaders are able to extend some control over them. Those leaders are of a slightly higher class, but are still on a relatively low level in intelligence and are still the black, slant-eyed variety of beasts. 

        "In the good corner, the riders of Rohan, a.k.a. the 'Whiteskins': 'Yellow is their hair, and bright are their spears. Their leader is very tall.' In the evil corner, the orcs of Isengard: 'A grim, dark band... swart, slant-eyed' and the 'dark' wild men of the hills. So the good guys are white and the bad guys are, erm... black." (Yatt)  John Yatt, author of an article for The Guardian, speaks out a lot against the inherent racism in the LotR series.  He, like Dr. Stephen Shapiro, an expert in cultural studies--more specifically, race and slavery--find the descriptions of the races and the behavior that is enforced upon them to be a supreme example of racism on the part of Tolkein.  According to both critics, the views expressed in the LotR series are not simply the normal stereotypes being played out in some new fashion.  Instead, what is really happening it Tolkein is expressing the views of a failing English culture.  "For instance, the fellowship is portrayed as uber-Aryan, very white and there is the notion that they are a vanishing group under the advent of the other, evil ethnic groups" (Bhatia).  The books were started in the 1930s, a time of de-colonization, immigration into Britain, and the Midlands, which is Tolkein's model for the Shire, was becoming a region of great diversity and cultural expansion.  As Yatt put it bluntly, "Strip away the archaic turns of phrase and you find a set of basic assumptions that are frankly unacceptable in 21st-century Britain" (Yatt).

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