Uncomfortable topics: Let's talk about race

[East Coast Hustle]

(Note to self: IF ever bitten by the restaurant bug again, consider opening a taco truck in the UK)

[Telarus]

(Note to self: IF ever bitten by the restaurant bug again, consider opening a taco truck in the UK)

Brilliant.

[Freeky]

So, I feel like a tool.

Anonymous asked: Lord of the Rings? Why there are no brothers on Middle Earth?

Oh, they're there, they're just the bad guys. Only.

Yeah, that shit is racist as fuck, by the way.

Yeah.  A bit on the sexist side, too.  Weren't any women with roles bigger than "trophy woman," from what I recall.

[Don Coyote]

So, I feel like a tool.

Anonymous asked: Lord of the Rings? Why there are no brothers on Middle Earth?

Oh, they're there, they're just the bad guys. Only.

Yeah, that shit is racist as fuck, by the way.

Yeah.  A bit on the sexist side, too.  Weren't any women with roles bigger than "trophy woman," from what I recall.

Evidently being a white male does make a lot of shit not noticeable. However, without doing a re-read, which I will do, I am going to out on a limb and posit that despite the lacking of strong female characters it probably isn't sexist. Unless sexist by omission.

[Placid Dingo]

Well it IS racist, but, you know, that's justified in the context that there ARE pure evil races in that universe, unlike ours.

[Freeky]

So, I feel like a tool.

Anonymous asked: Lord of the Rings? Why there are no brothers on Middle Earth?

Oh, they're there, they're just the bad guys. Only.

Yeah, that shit is racist as fuck, by the way.

Yeah.  A bit on the sexist side, too.  Weren't any women with roles bigger than "trophy woman," from what I recall.

Evidently being a white male does make a lot of shit not noticeable. However, without doing a re-read, which I will do, I am going to out on a limb and posit that despite the lacking of strong female characters it probably isn't sexist. Unless sexist by omission.

Only a bit sexist.  More like sterotypical trophy woman thing.  -shrug- Am not explaining well.

[Don Coyote]

Well it IS racist, but, you know, that's justified in the context that there ARE pure evil races in that universe, unlike ours.

Aside from the made up Elves and Orcs, there were the Easterlings and other races of man. The evil ones were all nonwhite ones if I'm not mistaken.

[Placid Dingo]

Personally I tend to draw a distinction between unfortunate implications or stereotypes and actual racism.

I don't find LOTR racist (other than the obvious in world context of evil races). I really dOnt use the term racist unless something seems like it really has an agenda (conscious or not) of devaluing people of a certain race. So Tarzan, where raised by monkeys White boy can teach himself to read but the filthy black savages get shot off by the dozen like the animals they are; sure. Racist as fuck. But a work like Little Women or others with the stock 'oh Lordy me!' black charactertures- I find that dated and offensive, but even though it's a porteyal or an idea that's clearly inappropriate, I wouldn't have said it's racist in that there's no attempt to devalue one race below another.

I think I've said before; there's still an argument that these kinds of works, LOTR included carry the implications of racist ideology and to a point (obviously in some works less so in others) can be seen as in themselves racist. I might not agree with you there exactly but I'll usually agree that its offensive.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If you haven't already done so, you should read "The Last Ringbearer". It's available for free download in PDF and tells the story of the War of the Ring from Mordor's perspective. It's relevant to this discussion.

Downloaded, thanks.

[Cain]

Tolkein himself felt he made a mistake in portraying the Orcs as fully evil, as revealed by his personal letters, and he felt putting them beyond the possibility of redemption went right against his beliefs as a Catholic.  Tolkein himself wasn't racist, (the Southron affinity for Sauron was more likely due to proximity to Mordor, and their skin colour due to it being a lot hotter down there), but he did recognize how people could read racist tropes into his works.  And indeed, because Tolkein was then horribly abused by at least two generations of hack writers, most of whom ripped him off while lacking any of his own imagination, standard fantasy had some rather disturbing racial elements (and, according to Michael Moorcock, an occasionally fascist aesthetic).

Something that was brilliantly highlighted by the American Sci-Fi writer Norman Spinrad, incidentally, in his The Iron Dream short story.  In this, after WWI, Hitler moves to America and becomes an artist, illustrating pulp novels and sci-fi adventures, and then eventually writing his own sci-fi and fantasy stories, all of course informed by his fascist worldview.

Fantasy is rather popular on the right, for a number of reasons.  Some paramilitary training camps in Italy were named after locations in LOTR, for example.  The simple good/evil dichotomy that exists in most stories of the genre, the setting is an idealized Western Europe in medieval times, and most of the good guys are white and secretly nobility.  In fact, now I think of it, I can only think of one fantasy series that has more non-white characters than white ones (y'know, like reality), that the nonwhites are portrayed as main characters, and they're not portrayed as being mostly evil, and that's Steven Erikson's books, which break with typical fantasy conventions on a number of points.

Then again, I don't read much fantasy, precisely because of the above.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So, I feel like a tool.

Anonymous asked: Lord of the Rings? Why there are no brothers on Middle Earth?

Oh, they're there, they're just the bad guys. Only.

Yeah, that shit is racist as fuck, by the way.

Yeah.  A bit on the sexist side, too.  Weren't any women with roles bigger than "trophy woman," from what I recall.

Evidently being a white male does make a lot of shit not noticeable. However, without doing a re-read, which I will do, I am going to out on a limb and posit that despite the lacking of strong female characters it probably isn't sexist. Unless sexist by omission.

Um...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Personally I tend to draw a distinction between unfortunate implications or stereotypes and actual racism.

I don't find LOTR racist (other than the obvious in world context of evil races). I really dOnt use the term racist unless something seems like it really has an agenda (conscious or not) of devaluing people of a certain race. So Tarzan, where raised by monkeys White boy can teach himself to read but the filthy black savages get shot off by the dozen like the animals they are; sure. Racist as fuck. But a work like Little Women or others with the stock 'oh Lordy me!' black charactertures- I find that dated and offensive, but even though it's a porteyal or an idea that's clearly inappropriate, I wouldn't have said it's racist in that there's no attempt to devalue one race below another.

I think I've said before; there's still an argument that these kinds of works, LOTR included carry the implications of racist ideology and to a point (obviously in some works less so in others) can be seen as in themselves racist. I might not agree with you there exactly but I'll usually agree that its offensive.

Oh wow. Really?

[Don Coyote]

So, I feel like a tool.

Anonymous asked: Lord of the Rings? Why there are no brothers on Middle Earth?

Oh, they're there, they're just the bad guys. Only.

Yeah, that shit is racist as fuck, by the way.

Yeah.  A bit on the sexist side, too.  Weren't any women with roles bigger than "trophy woman," from what I recall.

Evidently being a white male does make a lot of shit not noticeable. However, without doing a re-read, which I will do, I am going to out on a limb and posit that despite the lacking of strong female characters it probably isn't sexist. Unless sexist by omission.

Um...

Or am I just talking out my ass?

[BadBeast]

Ever read John Norman's Chronicles of Gor?  Gotta be the most outrageous sexist shit, a planet where he is transformed into a Hero, of the "He Man" type, and all the Women are Slaveys, and quite fulfilled and happy doing occasional sidekick duties, getting slain, fucked, or both, on top of all that oiling up, and pleasing Master. Got to read at least one chapter just to see this Utopian Big gaystrap fetish world, with oiled bimbos, noble enemies. and where real men always carry whips to keep their chickslaveharems in order.
Almost forgot, there's every racial stereotype in there too, from Arab ish slave Traders,  Persian ish houris, and Mongolian ish stinky barbarian hordes. Always always everyone sells you their Women, noble savages from far off lands, "Blah blah blah, wanna buy an oily chick from far away"?

I don't want to give too much away, and spoil what would otherwise be a fascinating discovery of how real women want to be owned by emotionally stunted bulked up WWR rejects with whips and quests, and big golden/magic/broken swords. 

[Placid Dingo]

Sorry Nigel I'm really not sure how to take that 'really'.