You know Tolkien Describes all his Elves as being white skinned?
Anghraineâs fantastic piece here does a great job of deconstructing this question, some related questions and why they all rest on disturbingly racist attitudes about what itâs acceptable to change and interpret in Tolkienâs legendarium. I donât have much to add to that, but:
I didnât remember seeing this, but itâs quite possible that I missed a critical passage somewhere. Â So I spent today rereading, looking for any reference at all to the skin color of Elves. And I found something!
As Maeglin grew to full stature he resembled in face and form rather his kindred of the Noldor [âŠ] He was tall and black-haired; his eyes were dark, yet bright and keen as the eyes of the Noldor, and his skin was white. Â
Thatâs it. Thatâs the only one. So I think itâs fair to say that Tolkien described Maeglin as having white skin. One could even argue that Tolkien described the Noldor as white, since he does mention in this passage that Maeglin looks Noldor. But thatâs a far cry from describing all Elves as white. In fact, I think itâs evidence of the opposite - the text does not bother mentioning that Maeglin has two eyes, or ten fingers, because those things are true of all Elves. But it does mention that his skin is white, maybe because that's not self-evident, maybe because itâs not true of all Elves.
Tolkien actually says very little about the skin color of any of his characters.  Did he imagine them all as white? Quite possibly.
But even the most extreme adherents to authorâs intent who I know donât insist that we have to restrain ourselves to imagining the characters the way that the author arguably probably imagined them. I am more than happy to ignore or reimagine some of the incredibly troubling elements of the legendarium (and yes, they are there), but in this case, we donât even need to do that.
Tolkien never describes his Elves as white skinned. Thereâs no reason to believe that all Elves had pale skin, and even if all Elves had pale skin not all people with pale skin are white.
It is okay to imagine Elves however you imagine them. But thereâs nothing âobjectively trueâ or âcanonically correctâ about imagining them universally white, and Tolkien never described them that way. And given that Elves are âbeyond all other beauty that Iluvatar has caused to beâ, and especially given that there are canonical POCs who are villains, I find the idea that theyâre all white pretty icky. Even if Tolkien had explicitly described them that way, I would challenge it. But he didnât, and the myth that he did is worth correcting as often and as loudly as necessary.Â
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