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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
Understood, but I'm not at all sure that your pedantry is leading us anywhere productive in this case.
I hold by my original point. In the face of accusations that Tolkien was a racist or that LotR is a racist work (whether intentionally or incidentally so), it is legtimate to analyse the book in the way Aiwendil suggested in order to counter such accusations (or at the very least to satisfy ourselves on the issue). And we can do so without necessarily forming any settled view as to what it was Tolkien was trying to achieve by writing the story. I fail to see how such a position can be at all controversial. But there we go. Pedantry will out. 
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Ok. To be honest this is not something I feel any need to defend Tolkien against. the accusation crops up, we disprove it. It crops up again, we disprove it. This will go on ad infinitum. There are critics out there with an agenda. Unfortunately at the present time its not enough simply not to be a racist you have to
prove you aren't a racist - & the easiest way to do that is to denounce someone else as one - preferrably an easy target (like a dead author). We can have an interesting discussion on the exact nature of 'race' & how Tolkien deals with it, we can have a pedantic discussion, playing word games & the rest, but the idea there is any chance of coming up with a strategy that will silence the critics once & for all is, I think, one bound to fail. When one's opponents are putting forward arguments like 'LotR is racist because the Orcs are dark skinned (or sallow skinned, or come from the east' its pretty clear that they are not interested in complex refutations - if indeed they they would even listen to them. My own feeling is they have decided it is racist & there is not a thing any of us can do to convince them they are wrong.
Frankly, my own feeling is that anyone who thinks LotR is racist has either not read it, or not understood it, & there's no point in flogging a dead horse.