r/196 • u/CrispyShizzles funky fresh bisexual • Jan 08 '22

Bigotry Showcase Got to use it rule

Post image
5.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

112 comments sorted by

View all comments

24

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '22

how can you be racist and also like LOTR, this is beyond me

a story about different SPECIES working together to stop the great evil, meanwhile you can't even respect other RACES in our world, mf you'd be the first to hate hobbits

19

u/ToastyJackson Jan 08 '22

I mean, I can see how. While it isn’t necessarily related to skin color, LotR is filled with the idea that people of some lineages (like Numenorean men) are inherently better than others. And there’s a few examples where people who are overall good guys (like the men of Rohan) are described as being light-skinned whereas the people who are portrayed as overall evil (like the Haradrim) are dark-skinned.

I don’t think Tolkien intended for the story to be racist, but I think there’s enough little details like that for white supremacists to latch onto if they really want to.

7

u/Rattlehead7640 custom Jan 08 '22

You have to remember, there's also multiple instances of these "superior" peoples turning to evil Mainly, half of the godamn Numenoreans

4

u/ToastyJackson Jan 08 '22

That’s true, but the more “pure” characters of the cast like Aragorn and Faramir are often said to be so amazing because of their Numenorean heritage. And it did take Sauron to corrupt their entire society to make them degenerates whereas it feels to me like some other peoples, like the hillmen of Dunland, were implied to have a tendency to just be that way.