I mean, I’m all for contextualizing Tolkien, and I’ll grant that many of his contemporaries were far more overtly racist (cough Lovecraft cough), but it’s still pretty hard to justify passages from his private letters that describe orcs as
squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types
Edit: here’s the Wikipedia source that describes the issue in fairly nuanced terms
Mongol-type or Mongoloid are terms that described Down’s Syndrome iirc. I don’t think it’s being used in a racial context beyond the obvious modern problems with those terms.
I think it’s pretty obvious from the rest of the sentence that Tolkien is explicitly using "Mongol-type"as a racial descriptor; “sallow” is referring to skin color, “slanted eyes” speaks for itself, and the fact that he explicitly references European beauty standards are all providing contextual evidence that Tolkien is using Eastern Asians as the physical model for orcs
Him being better than some contemporaries isn’t great. Still, the stories are good and generally you can take other messages from them that are decent. Like Éowyn fighting with the men despite being told her duty is elsewhere, despite Tolkien being misogynistic. He wouldn’t take out of the story the modern interpretation (even though the story that certainly inspired this is about a woman who literally becomes a man after all of this), but he himself said that readers should and will take things from the story that he didn’t intend, and that’s good.
I don’t have any particular issues with Tolkien besides that he wasn’t socially creative enough to see beyond what he knew, but that’s true for most people. He wrote fun, interesting, creative tales within that that generally have a hopeful uplifting message. However, we should always be critical of any creator of any work. We should strive to solve issues and point out flaws in order to improve our world. It can’t change the past, but it can change the future.
I mean, I’m all for contextualizing Tolkien, and I’ll grant that many of his contemporaries were far more overtly racist (cough Lovecraft cough), but it’s still pretty hard to justify passages from his private letters that describe orcs as
Edit: here’s the Wikipedia source that describes the issue in fairly nuanced terms
Mongol-type or Mongoloid are terms that described Down’s Syndrome iirc. I don’t think it’s being used in a racial context beyond the obvious modern problems with those terms.
I think it’s pretty obvious from the rest of the sentence that Tolkien is explicitly using "Mongol-type"as a racial descriptor; “sallow” is referring to skin color, “slanted eyes” speaks for itself, and the fact that he explicitly references European beauty standards are all providing contextual evidence that Tolkien is using Eastern Asians as the physical model for orcs
Him being better than some contemporaries isn’t great. Still, the stories are good and generally you can take other messages from them that are decent. Like Éowyn fighting with the men despite being told her duty is elsewhere, despite Tolkien being misogynistic. He wouldn’t take out of the story the modern interpretation (even though the story that certainly inspired this is about a woman who literally becomes a man after all of this), but he himself said that readers should and will take things from the story that he didn’t intend, and that’s good.
I don’t have any particular issues with Tolkien besides that he wasn’t socially creative enough to see beyond what he knew, but that’s true for most people. He wrote fun, interesting, creative tales within that that generally have a hopeful uplifting message. However, we should always be critical of any creator of any work. We should strive to solve issues and point out flaws in order to improve our world. It can’t change the past, but it can change the future.