I am amazed that this thread is still going on. Can't recall whether I posted in here before...
Anyway I am Chinese and am proud of my heritage. And yes, my skin is dark (from my father's side, the men of the house of Ong have dark skin
)
So do I look upon LoTR as a work of racism or the work of a racist? Neither. Infact it is one of my favourate books which incidentally is one reason I still linger around these boards. But neither do I feel the need to jump into the defence of the work or the author like many of you here, not just because I have no idea what was going through his mind then and whether there was "regression of subconscious racism" (good phrase!) but rather because I am just apathetic.
To me it is just a story book. Read it and enjoy it, if not read it and trash it. If that story was written with intention as racist propaganda such as
"Be wary of foul, untrustworthy darkies and white skin supreme!" I tell you I must have been completely dense to missed it head, tail and all.
There are of course the ultra-mandarins who would say that my casualness is a byproduct of the English colonial second class citizen mentality. This dispite the fact that a) I have not called any caucasian "master" before, b) public education has etched in the prejudice that the Brits can't fight to save their lives, hence the disasterous occupation of Singapore by the Japanese and c) I have two white aussies working
under me whom I bend and break so often depending on my mood (they call me the "devil" at Brani).
And I know I am not alone here and there are many other people worldwide who would share my point of view - the same kind of people that opponents of LoTR's "racism" love to equate and
"speak out in defence of" with the dark-skinned people with red tongues (too much promegranate juice I reckon) and foul dispositions.
So my response to this thread; the accusations academics heaped upon Tolkien and the defences for the same man, is "So what?" The people who are being "racially" depicted are either ignorant of existance of this work or just don't care.
If Tolkien was still alive and I met him, I would have congratulated him on a good read and no, I won't buy him a pint because he already earned loyalties through the copy I bought. And if, just if I were to walk through some streets somewhere in this world and some kid pointed at me exclaiming "Haradim! Hardadim! Foul Easterling!" I'll be cool.
At least I have an elephant kid. A big one. Now what you got?