Q: Was J.R.R. Tolkien a Racist?
ANSWER: No, J.R.R. Tolkien was not a racist. In fact, he would have struck many people as a very enlightened man for his generation. When he retired in 1959, Tolkien gave a valedictory address to the University of Oxford. It is published in full in J.R.R. Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. He was handing off his position as Professor of English Language and Literature to New Zealand-born Norman Davis. Near the end of his address, Tolkien acknowledged his successor and said:
If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
In 1944 J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son:
… for the word [freedom] has been so abused by propaganda that it has ceased to have any value for reason and become a mere emotional dose for generating heat. At most, it would seem to imply that those who domineer over you should speak (natively) the same language – which in the last resort is all that the confused ideas of race or nation boil down to; or class, for that matter, in England. – Letter No. 81
Nonetheless, many people falsely allege that J.R.R. Tolkien was a racist because they believe that The Lord of the Rings was written as a “white people against all other skin color peoples” story, which is simply not true.
The argument that J.R.R. Tolkien was a racist is neo-Nazi propaganda – Many years ago white supremacists began arguing on the Internet that The Lord of the Rings promotes white supremacy and racism. They used outright lies and clever errors of omission to fabricate a convincing narrative around this ridiculous thesis. Unfortunately – despite numerous denouncements and several attempts at debunkery – the lie has taken hold and many people now believe that Tolkien was a Nordicist. Nordicism is another name for white supremacy.
Understand that anyone who repeats these arguments and promotes this point of view is in fact supporting and spreading racist propaganda. There is no truth to the idea that The Lord of the Rings is a racist book.
There are many white-skinned characters in The Lord of the Rings who are engaged in the most egregious evil, including Saruman and Wormtongue. But in the background materials provided in the appendices there are plenty of references to other fair-skinned, fair-haired peoples engaging in evil — including Tolkien’s beloved Elves (who rebel against the Valar in the First Age and create the Rings of Power in the Second Age), the Numenoreans (who conquer wide lands across Middle-earth and enslave many peoples in the Second Age; and of whom many ultimately rebel against God and commit great evil), and tribes of Northmen who ally themselves with Gondor’s enemies.
But in Gondor itself, and apparently also Arnor, there were men of “faithful” Numenorean descent who succumbed to great evil and turned against their peers. Some of these men seized the city and port of Umbar, turning it into a rival power opposing Gondor. And among the Rohirrim, those “noble Northmen” whom many readers suggest epitomize Tolkien’s idealistic views of Anglo-Saxon culture, there were some who apparently hunted the peaceful forest-dwelling folk of Ghan-Buri-Ghan for sport. That’s not a very “good” activity and it would be insane for anyone to suggest that J.R.R. Tolkien meant for people to believe he wanted any man to hunt other people for sport.
So while Tolkien himself was not racist, the theme of racism crops up quite often in The Lord of the Rings. It is often the self-recognized “superior” races (the Elves and the Numenoreans in particular) who bring about the great calamities of Middle-earth. The recurring theme in Tolkien’s “good-versus-evil” stories is that all evil things start out as good things and in the end only the good that God approves of will survive. Hence, it is the meek, humble, not-so-white-skinned hobbits who defeat Sauron and save Middle-earth.
I should also note here (as I often do) that many of the “good” peoples of Middle-earth are dark-skinned. They live in Bree, they live in Gondor, and they live elsewhere. The battle lines are not drawn between “good whites” and “evil dark-skins” — except in the distorted mis-representations of the book that are used either to justify badly constructed defenses of Tolkien or the misguided attempts to condemn him for being “racist”.
Tolkien used racism as a literary device to divide his imaginary cultures, to allow them to exceed their high moral potential and face the temptation of believing in their own superiority. When these “superior castes” cross that line they must pay a terrible price for their moral failures. In other words, in Tolkien’s point of view there is nothing good about racism, which he personally condemned and opposed.
Unfortunately, though many people rise quickly to defend J.R.R. Tolkien against the absurd arguments that his critics raise against him, they fall quickly into the trap of replying to silly provocations — a trap that is designed only to control the conversation. Trust me, I have walked that treadmill more than I want to recall. You cannot win an argument with someone who declares blindly that J.R.R. Tolkien was a racist. At best you can write your own thoughtful explanation of what Tolkien was doing and not respond directly to these sensationalists. That is, after all, what they crave: a passionate response from you and as many other people as they can provoke.
And yet, having said all that, we must acknowledge that at some level virtually every cultural expression is racist in some way. The color of your skin does not make you a racist. The generation in which you were born does not make you a racist. If you feel a preference for one group over another; if you think poorly of one group of people but not all others, you are being racist. Most if not all people are racists by that definition. It’s a part of human nature, although one that many of us hope we can eventually overcome.
One of the challenges we face in overcoming racism is the many shades and variations we collectively and individually apply to the word “racism”. Racism isn’t simply a politically charged word — it’s a word that encompasses all the indignities that any one group of people heaps upon another. Virtually all of today’s ethnic groups are descended from peoples who were at one time or another looked down upon, derided, enslaved, or otherwise humiliated and devastated by other groups of people.
Racism is most easily recognized by those who have felt its poison, the more often felt the more easily recognized.
Racism is not necessarily a matter of conscious choice, although for some people it is.
Racism does not pick and choose sides. Those people who accuse all members of any other group of being racist are themselves expressing racism.
Racism is the great divider, the sieve with which we separate ourselves into “those like me” and “those not like me”. Political and religious leaders through the millennia and across all human cultures have used racism to increase their power and influence, to destroy their (imagined) enemies, and to ensure that they would remain powerful and influential leaders.
In the United States racism has been symbolized by the divisions between affluent families of northern European descent and families drawn from non-European peoples around the world; however, in Africa you’ll find racism fomenting feuds and wars between native peoples (such as the conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus); in South America you’ll find racism directed from region to region, across economic lines, varying by dialect and by ethnicity. In Asia racism has long divided many ethnic groups within nations that march under one name, one flag.
We cannot escape the racist aspects of human culture; we can only hope to rein them in, to teach ourselves that we have more to gain by thinking of each other as brothers and sisters descended from the same families (which science currently tells us came from Africa).
The Lord of the Rings encompasses J.R.R. Tolkien’s attempt to reveal the folly of placing one’s hope in racist ideals, of thinking that one is better than one’s neighbors. Tolkien wove racism deliberately into the fabric of his story, perhaps because he himself grew up the victim of prejudice in more ways than one. He was an orphan raised by a Catholic priest in a country that favored “whole” families and which had largely seceded from the Roman Catholic church.
Not all prejudices are based on the perception of “race”; many are based on the distinctions drawn between “classes” based on economics and family connections, religion and politics, and simple geography and dialect. If there is anything to be learned from discussing the racism in The Lord of the Rings it should be that we are all at our best when we put each other ahead of ourselves regardless of how anyone speaks, appears, or lives.
See Also …
- Is It True There Is Racism in The Lord of the Rings?
- Are All Tolkien Elves Fair-skinned?
- What Color Was Gollum?
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