Shapiro's slanderous rubbish

[Elenka]

I find this whole affair laughable. The idea that Tolkien was a racist and highly biased bad-guy author is simply ludicrous. Insane. Idiotic. Absurd. I kinda think the Shapiro guy must be desperate for some fame if he's trying that kind of rubbish.

[TinuvielChild]

You mean Shapiro.

[Nurvingiel]

I think sometimes, when people read a very great book, they read into it too much.

The Lord of the Rings is an amzing work which is incredibly detailed, people can identify with it in many ways and find a variery of different metaphors in it.

I'm sure Dr. Shapiro is a well-respected and very intelligent scholar, but he read into this way too deeply. I'm sure he found this racist theme, however, he was wrong.

I believe it was Sam in Ithilien who saw a dead Haradrim soldier. He felt only pity for the man, and wondered about his family. The Haradrim aren't portrayed as evil, just as people who fell under the sway of Sauron. This happens to loads of people - dwarves, humans, wizards, even elves and hobbits! There's no 'race' falling into evil or any non-sense like that. I think the Silmarillion goes into that a little bit more when humans first come to Middle-earth.

And the whole 'fear of a world falling into blackness' (paraphrase), the colour black is symbolic for evil in fantasies, as white is for good. This has nothing to do with race. Seriously! It's standard fantasy fare!

The whole technology taking over metaphor is much more valid.

You can find anything in the Lord of the Rings, why find racism where there isn't any?

[markedel]

This is more silimarillion related-but darkness was evil because Morgoth hated light, and so made darkness fearful. It's not inherantly bad.

[Helix]

Originally posted by Nurvingiel
You can find anything in the Lord of the Rings, why find racism where there isn't any?

Good point. Tolkien vehemently [i]hated[i/] allegory (at least in fictional writing). Nothing in Middle-earth directly resembled anything in our world (i.e. the One Ring doesn't represent nukes, so why would any race in Middle-earth represent any race in our world?).

[samwiselvr2008]

Originally posted by markedel
This is more silimarillion related-but darkness was evil because Morgoth hated light, and so made darkness fearful. It's not inherantly bad.

I'm not done reading the Sil. yet, but I'm geussing that Morgoth was exstreemly important? I'm not sher how long the Sil. will last, if it even gose into any part of the forging of the Rings of power, I am only at the part where the drawfs were just created, but did he fight agianst Sauron or something? Now I remember something about the Valar entering into darkness, and that is when they made the lights, but is that a part of the "darkness" thing? Wach out.... very confused mooter posting!

[markedel]

Morogth was Sauron's boss, as it were. The point I was trying to make is that many people see evil as "black" and see some racial statement, when Tolkien emphasized how Darkness in of itself was not originally evil (neither was Sauron, and neither as mention in LOTR were the misguided men of the East and South) but rather made to be evil through the art and folly of Morgoth.

[samwiselvr2008]

I looked up Lord of the Rings racist on google search and this is one thing that I found:

www.whiteprivilege.com/archives/2002/ 12/07/racism_and_lord_of_the_rings - 47k -

You should read this artical, I don't have time to read all of the replys, but I'll read them later. This was writen by a person who use to be a Lord of the Rings fan. I'll try to find some more later, but I thought that this was very intresting. I hope this is not advertising, please tell me if it is!

[Lanelf]

Originally posted by markedel
This is more silimarillion related-but darkness was evil because Morgoth hated light, and so made darkness fearful. It's not inherantly bad.

Actually, the Elves first awoke in darkness, and they always preferred it to sunlight. If Morgoth hates the light, well, so do others. It's more a matter of taste than generalising.
Lanelf.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Not darkness, but the starry night-sky. The Elves love the stars because they were the only light in the sunless years.

[ils]

[sorry -- this turned out a bit longer than I meant it to.]

Like any writer, J.R.R. Tolkien reflected many assumptions of his day and age -- some good, some bad. Race was among them, and I think it's simply denial not to see that, just as it would be denial not to notice racism in Shakespeare plays like "Titus Andronicus" and "The Merchant of Venice."

Though I haven't read his article, from what's quoted in the interview Shapiro seems to be overshooting the mark more than a little. But I'll cordially disagree with those here who have called him foul names, denounced his intentions as "cynical" or "slanderous" and dismissed his conclusions as "absurd."

I'll preface this by saying that I would take exception to anyone saying that Tolkien's work was <i>nothing more</i> than racist propaganda. I wouldn't read his work were that the case. But do the ideas turn up, and fairly prominently? Sure, they do. A couple of examples:

- The Swarthiness of Evil: The pattern of goodness = paleness, evil = swarthiness is not 100 percent consistent in Tolkien's work, but it's very, very strong. Too strong not to notice. Whether or not you want to think the swarthiness of orcs and goblins is just incidental to what REALLY makes them inherently evil,** the swarthiness itself is a consistent feature.

And of course it's not limited to orcs. The men of the South are also held to be almost universally servants of Sauron wherever they appear -- the "cruel Haradrim" mounted on their oliphaunts are obviously meant to evoke North Africa (or perhaps India). And the Southron host also features men from Far Harad "like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues" in a parallel of the minstrel-show Negro stereotype (at the Battle of the Pellenor Fields).

Now of course there are a few examples of the non-swarthy turning up in the ranks of the Dark Lord. Cf. Saruman and Grima, or the Black Numenoreans. But are there ANY examples ANYWHERE in Tolkien's corpus of the swarthy turning up on the side of good in a way that merits mention? I can't think of a single solitary one.

** And yes, orcs ARE held to be inherently evil throughout Tolkien's work; they don't get "converted" at the end of RotK as someone claimed earlier.

- The Notion of Pure Blood: "Race" is about more than colour, of course. There's also the notion of nations, national characteristics and pure-bloodedness that comes into it.

Though these ideas were starting to lose scientific credibility while Middle Earth was still just a gleam in Tolkien's eye, they hung on to lay credibility long enough to turn up as background assumptions in his work. A central device in LotR is the notion of a paternalistic superior race of Men, the Dunedain. Though they're flawed, these long-lived and vigorous Men of the West always form the main bulwark of resistance to Sauron and create the best, most just and powerful states of Men in any Age (be it the Edain of the First Age, or Numenor, or ancient Gondor and Arnor, or Aragorn's Reunited Kingdom).

We already know about the contrast the swarthy Haradrim present to this relatively rosy picture -- but the Easterlings, who seem to vaguely resemble steppe nomads (maybe anlogous to Cossacks or Slavs?) are also unrelievedly evil wherever they're encountered.

So, the concept of discrete "races" of Men with inherent characteristics is very much at home in Tolkien, and very much a part of the story.

.....

Now of course, having racist assumptions in his work does not make Tolkien necessarily a propagandist for rabid racism a la the Nazis. And I'm not quite sure where Shapiro is coming from with the whole Dwarves-as-Scots thing. But the fact remains that Tolkien's work does pretty closely reflect the racial assumptions of Britain in his era, so it's no use pretending that race simply wasn't an issue.

Fortunately, Middle Earth is a rich enough tapestry -- and open enough to speculations -- for us as contemporary readers to freely reimagine it and rise above those assumptions. The real mark of a good work of literature is that it can rise above the flaws of the author, so that those who follow don't have to pretend their literary heroes were saints in order to appreciate their writing.

Finally, a word of caution about academic debates: always go to the source if you can. What often happens when lit crit gets media attention is that a seemingly inflammatory detail or line of argument is picked out and focussed on out of context. Shapiro may not be claiming what the online interview seems to imply he's claiming, and his original argument may include all kins of caveats and cautions that didn't get translated here.

[Elfhelm]

The orcs are elves who have been twisted. They were not racially impure. They were made that way by experience.

Strider is originally seen as rough and dark. Samwise is fat. All the Hobbits are short. Dwarves are dark, too.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is about different races learning to put aside their differences to fight a common adversary, who by the way, cares not what color you are. He just hates everyone.

The trick with Tolkien's "applicability" is that you see what you want to see, as in a mirror. So if Shapiro sees racist propaganda, maybe he should examine himself for that.

The sun makes things grow. That is why light is a good thing. Black is not a skin color except in a dictionary. Up close it's more like a deep purple. But the sun is also very dangerous, and skin with a lot of melanin is very good at filtering out harmful rays. The night is good, too, I know. Patterns of light and dark cause the trees to refresh the atmosphere. But humans use their eyes to guide their steps, and times of pitch darkness really are scary, especially when predators have better night vision. All of which is to say, don't try to eliminate the scary aspects of the dark from our collective unconcious. It's there for a reason, and that reason is not racism, it is based on the ability to see safely.

Anyhow, if someone looks in the mirror and sees a racist, he shouldn't blame the maker of the mirror.

[ils]

Originally posted by Elfhelm
The orcs are elves who have been twisted. They were not racially impure. They were made that way by experience.

Actually, we don't have much from Tolkien on the creation of orcs in LotR -- nor elsewhere in the corpus save for hints that their progenitors were twisted elves, maybe Avari. But he certainly seems to have imagined them as a race or type apart, and he is very clear on the point -- particularly within the LotR context -- that they are in the essence of their being evil and non-redeemable, animated largely by the will of their Dark Lord. That's precisely why orcs don't merit the same considerations, or the same mercies, as human opponents in the War of the Rings.

Strider is originally seen as rough and dark . . . Dwarves are dark, too.

You'll recollect my point was about the swarthiness of evil. Tolkien doesn't use the terms "dark" and "swarthy" interchangeably, he uses them specifically. And it is invariably the "swarthy" -- along with others, of course -- who are sunk in the service of evil and the hatred of the West. We never see a divergence from that pattern in Tolkien.

I don't regard this as the single most important thing that can be said about his work, but I see no point in dancing around it.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is about different races learning to put aside their differences to fight a common adversary, who by the way, cares not what color you are. He just hates everyone.

Oh sure, that's part of it, too. Of course, that doesn't negate the fact that notions of race are interwoven with the story in other ways. Texts are complex, especially big epics like Tolkien's. They are almost always "applicable" in more than one way.

The trick with Tolkien's "applicability" is that you see what you want to see, as in a mirror. So if Shapiro sees racist propaganda, maybe he should examine himself for that.

Of course, by this reasoning there can BE no racist writing or implications, period, in any text anywhere. Any time it crops up, the author can simply say "I know you are, but what am I?" Sorry, but it just won't wash.

One can't, in fact, say much about what an author intended by such and such characterization in his or her work. No reviewer is telepathic or clairvoyant. But one can certainly point out techniques of representation in the text itself -- when the author uses such and such a word or characterization -- and speculate as to how they're likely to function for most of the readers who encounter them. "You see what you want to see, as in a mirror" simply won't cut it as an intellectually honest response to that kind of criticism. Indeed, it sounds more like a particularly grubby sort of ad hominem attack than anything else. Best to avoid that sort of thing.

Again, this issue shouldn't be focussed on monomaniacally -- and I somehow doubt that's what Shapiro is doing; remember that caution about how the media tends to "report" on academic debates -- but there's certainly nothing wrong or outrageous in acknowledging it and discussing it.

[diannah]

Being swarthy doesn't make you evil. Orcs I read somewhere have scorched skin from being tortured and they used to be Elves. That's just a fact that proves that Tolkien wasn't a rascist. He gave a reason as to why they were swarthy. As far as the wild men of Dunland go, they appear to be nomads who spend a lot of time in the sun, so like Africans they just have naturally darker skin. But that does not imply Tolkien is a rascist. It's just cause and effect.

[Falagar]

Now of course there are a few examples of the non-swarthy turning up in the ranks of the Dark Lord. Cf. Saruman and Grima, or the Black Numenoreans. But are there ANY examples ANYWHERE in Tolkien's corpus of the swarthy turning up on the side of good in a way that merits mention? I can't think of a single solitary one.

YES, there were examples of good, swarthy guys, in the Silm.

[ils]

Originally posted by Falagar
YES, there were examples of good, swarthy guys, in the Silm.

Such as...

Seriously, I'm open to being convinced of this. I'm re-reading the Silmarillion right now and haven't found anything.

[ils]

Originally posted by diannah
Being swarthy doesn't make you evil.

If all swarthy people in a corpus of writing are assigned the trait of "evil," a correlation based on an innate characteristic is plainly being established. Whether the writer assigns various reasons for their swarthiness is completely irrelevant.

I'll give you a somewhat parallel example. Those who were apologists for slavery often used the Biblical tale of Ham's cursing as an excuse. They assigned a characteristic to blackness -- e.g. the instinct to be a slave and the necessity to rule and dominate people with that characteristic -- and they gave a reason for the swarthiness of the people they were libelling. Does that mean they weren't racists?

Now, do I think Tolkien's racial characterizations are nasty to that degree? No, obviously not. But are they of similar kind? Yes.

[DraztiK]

in the Silmarillion there were two groups of Easterlings, one lead by one guy and his sons and the other lead by another guy and his sons, in the service of the Noldor.

In the this one big battle (sry, can't remember the names) the one group betrayed the Elves and the Edain, but the other group remained faithful and fought alongside the good guys.

[ils]

Ah, right, the sons of Bor in the Unnumbered Tears. Right. I stand corrected on the Easterlings -- there is one example of goodness among them. It isn't much, but it's something (though note that Bor started out in alliance with Morgoth). So that somewhat addresses my second point.

(Though recollect the Easterlings aren't swarthy -- they seem to be modelled on steppe nomads more than anything else.)

[ils]

Originally posted by ils
Finally, a word of caution about academic debates: always go to the source if you can.

Attempting to follow my own advice, I haven't managed to find a copy of Shapiro's paper yet, but I did find this:

http://www.overthrow.com/lsn/news.asp?articleID=3326

Which gives some context as to why the issue is coming up now and what's at stake for Tolkien's legacy. Just to underline the importance of discussing the issues frankly rather than ignoring them or pretending they don't exist.