Posted on 12/31/2025 1:21:07 PM PST by River Hawk
Students at the University of Nottingham are upset after a history course labeled J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as racially offensive.
The controversy comes from a module called Decolonising Tolkien et al, taught by historian Dr. Onyeka Nubia, which examines how British literature has historically reflected racial bias. According to course materials, darker-skinned characters in Tolkien’s works, including orcs and other groups, are depicted as morally corrupt, while lighter-skinned characters are shown as virtuous. The module argues these depictions tie into a long tradition of racial stereotyping.
The course also examines how Tolkien’s Eastern characters, such as Easterlings, Southrons, and the men of Harad, are portrayed as inherently evil.
The materials claim that Tolkien’s fictional races carry echoes of “anti-African antipathy,” portraying Africans as “the natural enemy of the white man.” Students are taught to consider literature through the lens of decolonization, analyzing established works from non-Western or non-white perspectives.
Dr. Nubia has written about how Africans lived in medieval England but were often erased from literature, and the course also extends its critique to C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, highlighting orientalist depictions of the Calormen. Shakespeare has also been discussed, with Dr. Nubia stating that his plays helped create an “illusion” of a racially homogenous England by omitting references to Africans.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
These are mad times we are living in!
Well, the Somalis sure put the lie to that trope.
That first sentence has got to be IA, doesn’t it? That’s terrible.
Nordic legends never had too many DEI characters
So what?
There there’s another science fiction writer, Michael moorecock who wrote fantasy science fiction in the 60s and seventies who would totally agree with this.
Professor Nubia is free to write his own trilogy making the dusky orcs the good guys. Hollywood would no doubt buy the film rights into the bargain.
“I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar the Elfstone, Dunadan. The heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me, or thwart me? Choose swiftly!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers...so this guy was racist?
There there’s another science fiction writer, Michael moorecock who wrote fantasy science fiction in the 60s and seventies who would totally agree with this.
Just wait until the wokesters get hold of “The Adventures of Tintin.” Racial stereotypes aplenty in those stories!
IN LOTR, the orcs were deformed and twisted humans, with some of them being elves.
Just more proof that academia has run out of worthwhile subject matter. And to think — someone probably did their dissertation on de-colonizing a fantasy world.
The claim that Amazon showrunners kept making while shooting Rings of Power was that Tolkien was racist because he wasn’t “multicultural enough”. He was an expert in Norse mythology and English folklore, which you can’t be anymore, apparently. You can certainly make a movie like “Wakanda” however, in which everyone is a black African.
Tolkien probably didn't give Africa even a passing thought, because why would he?
Correct reaction.
Why can’t something be anti-African? Anti-American is accepted every day.
That said, the UK will reap what they have sewn...
From his personal letters, Tolkien often struggled to explain exactly what Orcs were. He seems to have finally settled on them being former elves that were captured by Morgoth and twisted toward evil. But the actual word “orc” refers to evil spirits from Beowulf. The problem really stems from taking things intended to be spiritual and mythological and making them flesh and blood.
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