Tolkienâs canon supports a racially diverse portrayal of Middle-earth
Iâm tired of people complaining about diversity in depictions of Tolkienâs work, and Iâm tired of these people calling themselves âTolkien puristsâ, as if they have canon on their side. They donât.Â
People who are actually Tolkien purists: have strong feelings about what the LOTR movies changed and omitted from the books; can quote the source material with scary levels of accuracy; have extremely strong opinions on obscure topics; probably taught themselves how to read tengwar⊠things like that.
People who are not Tolkien purists, and should never be called Tolkien purists: anyone arguing that all of Tolkienâs characters have to be portrayed by white people.
To start off with, most people already know that some characters in Tolkienâs works, like the Haradrim, are coded as people of color. But theyâre generally unnamed antagonists and they appear in the story briefly. I want to talk about whether or not there are people of color among Middle-earthâs protagonists. And the answer is yes.Â
So-called âTolkien puristsâ often dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, itâs a sort of âfantasy Europe.â The problem with this argument is that Europe has never been 100% white. So, this line of faulty reasoning can be ignored completely.
Second, Tolkien never stated that all of his heroes were white. Some of them, for example some of the hobbits, are described as having brown skin, which could apply to people of a variety of ethnicities. Others, such as the Elves, are described in ambiguous ways that could also describe people of various ethnicities. Other characters have no visual descriptions at all. People who think that all of Tolkienâs heroes must be white donât actually have any grounds to prove it, and it reveals a lot more about them than it does about LOTR.
Third, people dismiss the idea that people of color exist in Middle-earth because, they argue, Tolkien based his stories on Northern European myths and culturesâand he did, although they should refer back to my first point: Europe has never been 100% white. But if youâre one of those people who says, âThere canât be people of color in Middle-earth, because Tolkien based his stories on myths from Northern Europe, and wanted to write a mythology for England!â then youâve just revealed that you actually know very little about Tolkienâs worldbuilding.
Because, yes, Tolkien did draw inspiration from many Northern European myths, cultures, and languages, but he had other inspirations as well. According to one of his maps, Tolkien envisioned Gondor lying at about the latitude of Italy. Do you really think thereâs no one of African or Middle-eastern descent in Italy? And thatâs just the beginning. Tolkien also based the crown of Gondor on the crown of the Pharaohs of Egypt, and likened its architecture to Egyptian architectureâthat means Gondor canonically takes aesthetic and cultural inspiration from an African kingdom. In a letter, Tolkien also identified Minas Tirith with the Byzantine Empire, which at one time included parts of modern-day Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Crimea, Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syriaâif I havenât missed any. He also drew inspiration for AdĂ»naic and Khuzdul from Hebrew.Â
You canât have it both ways: if you believe that Tolkienâs inspiration from Northern European myths, cultures, and languages means his characters have to be white, then you are forced to concede that if he also drew inspiration from North African and Middle-eastern civilizations, cultures, and languages, then some of his characters have to be people of color, too. You canât use canon to prove that all of Tolkienâs protagonists were white, because he never said they were, and if you do some research, youâll just find more and more evidence that actually fully supports a diverse Middle-earth. There is an undeniable influence on Tolkienâs worldbuilding from places outside of Northern Europe, and all of this would suggest that he envisioned at least some of his protagonists to be North African and Middle-eastern. Not only that, but people move around; the Byzantine Empire traded with China and India, and was most likely full of people from all over the place.Â
I want to add that, although this post was sparked by the discussion going on about The Rings of Power, donât mistake this for a gesture of support for the show. While Iâm strongly in favor of more diversity in portrayals of Middle-earth, Amazon systematically discriminates against people of color and has sold racist material on their website for years, so they shouldnât receive praise for doing the bare minimum to create a diverse cast. Theyâre selling the aesthetic of diversity in a fantasy world while remaining hostile to it in reality.
And Iâve said a lot about Amazon elsewhere, but the main point of this post is that people have no right to call themselves Tolkien purists if they think all the heroes of his stories have to be white. I will also note that so-called Tolkien purists are up in arms over the very idea of a Black Elf, but they donât seem very concerned with Amazonâs significant changes to Tolkienâs actual storiesâcompressing the timeline of the Second Age, for instance, which is an extreme departure from canon. Anyone whoâs more upset about people of color playing Elves and Dwarves than they are about changes to actual canon is not a Tolkien purist at all, and they donât know very much about the canon they claim to respect.
As a final addition, I donât think readers need permission from the source material to interpret the characters the way they want to. If you want to draw Tolkienâs characters as people of color, you donât need to write a dissertation with footnotes proving that itâs exactly what he intended. But I do see a lot of people creating diverse fan art and saying, basically, âI donât care if this contradicts canon!ââand thereâs nothing wrong with that approach, but are you sure it contradicts canon? Or is canon actually quite vague and open to interpretation when it comes to charactersâ ethnicities? Itâs important for Tolkien fans to remember that the actual source material here is way more friendly to these interpretations than a lot of people believe, and we need to reject the exclusionist rhetoric of the so-called âpuristsâ who think canon is on their side when they claim that Middle-earth is exclusively white. Theyâre wrong. Canon is not on their side.
dailybridgerton
areudirty
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
gummygunk
snowghoul
germansingergirl
