Racism in Tolkien

[Inderjit S]

Lord of the rings is one of the greatest novels ever. Yet it is also fraught with controversy. One of the biggest ‘gripes’ that people have with it, are the perceived racist overtones that exist in Tolkien’s works . Supposedly, all dark skinned peoples are evil worshipers of Sauron. Yep, so I suppose that Sam, Tom Bombadil and the Breemen are secretly worshipping Sauron sacrificing goats testicles and rebelling against authority, spraying ‘Eru sucks’ on the classroom walls? So do we automatically assume that every dark skinned person in Middle-Earth is evil, since Tolkien was racist? I don’t think so.

Firstly, let’s start with those little fellas the Hobbits. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. If you’re a grumpy old wizard that is. Many people think that all Hobbits have pale skin, yet this is not true.

In their origin, when Strider was a Hobbit named Trotter and Treebeard was a malevolent megalomaniac Bond villain, Hobbits were said to have be like Aborigines. Of course this was changed, but the diversity of skin colour exists in Hobbits as much as it does in Humans.

The Harfoots, were said to have ‘nut-brown’ skin, and it is probable the Gamgee’s were of the Harfoot clan, as there is a brief reference to Sam’s ‘brown-hand’ in Book Six, though I cannot remember where it was exactly.

And now we come to Mr Unknown identity himself-Tom Bombadil. Tom, the enigmatic jackass also had brown skin, which is shown by the following passage, in the chapter, ‘In the House of tom Bombadil’, in which he asks Frodo to give him the ring.

“ It seemed to grow larger as it lay for a moment in his on his big brown skinned hand”

So these examples show that there were some good dark skinned people in Middle-Earth. “ But hang on!” you say, surely all dark skinned men are evil? Look at the Easterlings, the Haradrim and the Variags of Khand (Such nice names.)

Well, let’s delve into the history of men. In their origin, men were corrupted by Melkor not long after they first arose, and so all men fell into the shadow, and were forsaken for a while by Eru, and their life expectancies were cut dramatically short.

Well, Melkor left them to their own devices as he went off to the war in Beleriand. Many men then revolted, against the ‘men of darkness’. Now, just because they are called the ‘men of darkness’ doesn’t mean they are actually ‘dark-skinned’. Dark is often associated with evil, and so I think that by saying ‘men of darkness’, Tolkien is just saying that they were evil men, and it I probable that they were of mixed races.

O.K, to continue. It is probable that the first main migrating camp for men, was on the Sea of Rhun. The Beorians (House of Beor) were the first to reach the Sea, followed by the Marachians. (House of Hador), whilst it seems that the Haladin (House of Haleth) had passed on to lands further east, with the Druedain, another good dark-skinned people, though I will be picking up on that later on.

Now, the Beorians, were described as having dark hair, and were most like to the Noldor. But a lot of them were also said to have a swarthy complexion, due to interbreeding with other Easterling tribes, such as the Borrim. (House of Bor.)
So we see that there is a race of good dark-skinned men.

We can stretch this further, by looking at the Dunedain of Middle-Earth. Now, it is probable that most of the survivors of the Downfall of Numenor were of Beorian descent, as their descriptions match the descriptions of the house of Beor. (Dark hair, grey eyes etc.) Now, several times, the Rangers are described as having a rather dark complexion, and the cartoon version of Aragorn certainly seems to have a light brownish skin colour.

Now assuming that Minas Tirith is in the region of Florence, Italy. Then couldn’t
They represent the roman empire? Albeit, this conception may be far fetched, due to Tolkien’s dislike of allergy, yet it is still a possibility.

It also seems to me that the Third House of the Edain, the Haladin, also may have been dark-skinned, since the majority of their descendants in the Second and Third Ages, such as the Dunlendings were dark skinned and the men in ‘Tal-Elmar’ may have been some Haladin who excavated to the South.

Let’s look at the Borrim. Now, a lot of you who have read The Silmarillion, and thus you will know of the two swarthy tribes, the evil followers of Ulfang and the good ones of Bor. Now, before they excavated into Beleriand, the Borrim resided in Eriador, with other mannish tribes, and probably the followers of Bereg, of the House of Beor.

So, we can see that the majority of the indigenous mannish population of Eriador, were dark-skinned, though most of the Borrim of Beleriand were slain in Unnumbered Tears or it’s aftermath. (A few of Turin’s ‘wolf-group’ may have been followers of Bor or Ulfang. This is a possibility, as one of the men was named Ulrad. Which is similar to Ulfang.)

So the men of Eriador, who were in the majority good natured, set another example of a good dark-skinned people. Though it was a hugely mixed population of many tribes of men, that unfortunately suffered greatly due to the war with Sauron and later with The Witch-King, and so they were pretty much wiped out, as many probably marched with Elendil in the last alliance.

Now, let’s look at the Druedain, the ancestor’s of the Pukel men. The Druedain, and their descendants were another good dark-skinned peoples, who were the first men to ever cross the Anduin (So the Gondorian loremasters say) and they went into the white mountains, though many went with the Haladin into Beleriand, and so got involved in the war with Morgoth. Some survived, and went to Numenor, though when Tar-Aldarion began his journeys to Middle-Earth, claiming evil would come out of his voyages, and by the time that Sauron came to Numenor, they had all gone to Middle-Earth. It was these peoples who later helped Theoden in the War of the ring.


The Dunlendings were another group of good dark-skinned peoples. In the beginning, they had come to the lands the were later known as Gondor, and resided their, but they were pushed out by the Dunedain of Isildur and Anarion. Later on, they went to Rohan, but the Rohirrim pushed them out.

So who can blame the Dunlendings for their misgivings against the Rohirrim? Even then, most of the Dunlendings remained a ‘good peoples’. Some fell into evil, whilst some excavated north and some interacted with the Rohirrim and some even had interracial marriages. Wulf, the leader of the dissension in the time of helm was of mixed Rohhirm-Dunlending race. Another possible ‘mixed-race’ person was Erkenbard, the mighty warrior in LOTR. He was unusually friendly with the Dunlendings when they were defeated and he also knew their language, and so couldn’t he have some kind of Dunlandish ascendancy?

It seems that the Dunlendings were simply misguided by Saruman, who merely inflamed their grievances against the Rohirrim, and later on the lived peacefully in Dunland.

Meanwhile, their northern Arnorian relations settled in Bree, were also living ‘good’ lives (with a few exceptions, such as Bill Ferny, whose evil behaviour was unusual since he was the talk of the village). But Bree was probably not fully mad up of Dunlendings and Hobbits, and it was originally founded by some Haladin, and the Butterbur’s were probably descendants of the Haladin, hence Buttebur’s red cheeks.

The Haradrim, certainly have a Arabic or Indian feel, and as for the Easterlings and the Variags of Khand, Tolkien never gave us any information on their skin colour, which left many to assume they were had a Chinese/East European look. Well, for one, the Wainriders, the most evil of all the Easterling groups were white, and though doubtless some may have been Chinese-esque, we don’t know for sure.

Yet, we still see that even the good ‘white’ tribes of men can be bad. The Numenoreans had the greatest fall of man since their first fall, and Boromir tried take the one ring, whilst Isildur failed his people by not throwing the ring in Mount Doom when he had the chance.

Yet Tolkien held that all men were ‘fallen’, due to the ignorance of their forefathers. (Except perhaps for a few exceptions, such as Hurin, Huor, Beren, Tuor, Amandil, Elendil and Aragorn) So one can see that man is a very complicated race in M-E, and as we see in Tolkien’s last book, which he abandoned (The new Shadow?) men were destined to fall again, and again and again, no matter what race they were.

[Maedhros]

A very well research topic Inder.
The thing that made me wonder too is the fact that while Men despite their race tended to fall again and again, all of Tolkien elves are depicted as white. His fairer race in the mythology.

[Inderjit S]

The only possible explanation I can come up with is that Elves are based on North-European legends.

[Chymaera]

Posted by Inderjit S
One of the biggest ‘gripes’ that people have with it, are the perceived racist overtones that exist in Tolkien’s works.

I would just like to state here that Tolkien was born in South Africa,(a fact which by itself means nothing)and this exposed Tolkien from very early on to the natives of that land. His mother Mabel Tolkien found the Boer's attitudes to natives objectionable. I am sure that Tolkien taking his mother's cue also found such racist attitudes objectionable.

Tolkien is no racist, and as stated above these attitudes are only perceived.

To illustrate my point I direct you the 'The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien' to letters No. 29 and 30. These letters are in responce to inqueries from the publishers of the German language edition of 'The Hobbit' in 1938! The Germans wanted to know if Tolkien was an Aryan and did he have any Jewish ancestery!!

I don't have the letter in fron of me at the moment but I dearly enjoyed Tolkien's responce.

[paraphrase] Sadly, I have the misfortune of not being able to claim any of that most nobel blood.

I will dig it out and post it as soon as I can.


Inderjit S I enjoyed your post well reasearched.
unlike my poor post

[reem]

wow! i didn't get to read all that, but i want to comment on the term 'men of darkness'. Inderjit, the fact that tolkien used 'darkness' instead of plain 'dark' or 'black' proves that he's not really racist and he wasn't saying that dark men were evil...they were just sun tanned
darkness has more of a refference to the night, or lack of light, which eveil is associated with.
but if you did want to complain about tolkien being racist, then i would object to the refferance to the men of the East! what's that all about? their all evil crude people who follow the dark lord. evil men, eh?? what's he hinting at?? i don't like it one bit
...if that doesn't satisfy you then you can say that most eatern people have dark skin!
reem

[baragund]

I never perceived even a smidgen of racism in any of Tolkien's works, and even the idea that there is a controversy in the matter surprises me. I agree with Inderjit's points about good groups of men who happen to be dark skinned and evil groups of men who happen to be light skinned. The King's Men of Numenor were about as bad as you can get and they were fair skinned.

I would go farther to say that the mixture in the races of men is kind of beside the point. Tolkien intended Middle Earth to be an English mythology and the English are fair skinned. It makes sense to me that the mythology of a given culture would mirror the physical makeup of their societies.

How many blond haired / blue eyed characters are there in your typical African or Aborigine mythology?

[reem]

...good point. i won't be complaining about anything that sounds suspciously racist from tolkien anymore.
reem

[Mirabella]

Originally posted by Maedhros
A very well research topic Inder.
The thing that made me wonder too is the fact that while Men despite their race tended to fall again and again, all of Tolkien elves are depicted as white. His fairer race in the mythology.

It's true that on the whole, the Elves a nobler and higher race than Men, but they weren't perfect. There were evil Elves: Feanor, Celegorm, Curufin, Eol, Maeglin, Saeros are ones I can think of. And let's not forget that on three separate occasions, Elves fought against Elves. The point being that there is good and evil to be found in all of ME's races.

I wish I could find a reference for a quote I am about to paraphrase, but I can't. I remember reading this not too long after TTT came out. But the author of the article I read said, in effect, that people who read Tolkien's works find such meanings as they already have in their hearts. In other words, if people find racisim in his books, it's because they already have racist views in their hearts.

[Niniel]

I never believed anything of the whole story of Tolkien being racist, but thanks for spelling it out at such length

[Idril]

The racist issue did cross my mind while reading the book, but that was the extent of it. Wow Inderjit S, good work

[BlackCaptain]

Well... for someone to be colored in tolkien's works, they would have to come from a very heated place. Harad, being a very heated place, people would recieve alot of tanning, and after a period of a thousand years or so, they would become a black race. Now, if I remember correctly, all of the Haradrim, or most, were servants of Sauron.

It's all just a cooincindence realy. No racism

[Eriol]

To go around looking for racism, even subconscious racism (which strikes me as nonsense), is a favorite pastime of some groups, especially in developed countries (unlike Brazil, so far -- thank God).

The funny thing is that they accuse the so-called racists of "hate". Not exactly a loving accusation. "I hate haters" is somewhat quaint...

[Sirion]

I thought the people complained more about the idea of the superior Numenorean race and the purity of its blood.

[Elendil3119]

The funny thing is that they accuse the so-called racists of "hate". Not exactly a loving accusation. "I hate haters" is somewhat quaint...

Yeah, it is. BTW, very nice work Inderjit.

[Walter]

What a great summary, Inderjit - too bad you didn't post it at the Wiki too

Anotherone of the main reasons for these accusations was Tolkien's statement in one of his letters (#210):

The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the 'human' form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

But if we see Tolkien's statements, which caused these accusations, in their historical and mythological context, litle remains that can seriously be considered racism from Tolkien's side.

If we accept Tolkien's declared intention that he wanted to "create a mythology for England" as true, his tales (or at least part of them) would have to be closely connected to the "oral tradition" brought to England by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (which was "history" back then rather than "mythology"). And if we keep in mind the main cause for their migration to England - the invasion of the Huns - we get a pretty good explanation.

How would the Huns who killed the people of the Goths and burned down their houses be described by them (or their descendants)? Probably as "sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types"...