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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
The likes of Dr Shapiro and Jonathan Hari, as I understand their position, do assert that Tolkien intended LotR to be a racist work, or at least a work which supported his presumed (by them) racist worldview.
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I know - but its hardly an original or unusual statement. My point is that we can either dismiss their statements out of hand by saying the book has no inner meaning & leave it at that, or we have to argue on their terms & state what it does mean - in which case we have to determine what it actually means, what Tolkien actually is saying in the book.
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Morevover, a work can be labelled as promoting undesirable actions or ideologies irrespective of authorial intention. I doubt that the creators of Tom & Jerry ever intended it to promote smoking, yet it was deemed to have that effect and so the "offending" scenes were duly excised.
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Of course - even the words an author uses change meaning over time (Tolkien's use of 'gay' & 'queer' now have to be mentally 'translated' by the reader into their older sense). Where Tolkien uses the word 'queer' in the book it also has negative connotations, having the sense of eerie, supernatural. If a gay reader percieves a homophobic sub text (intended by Tolkien or otherwise) how should we respond?