: : Seeing the racist thing i being brought up again, can anybody
: : tell me exactly what racism is and what not. It's perfectly
: : okay to slay thousands of Orcs and to portray all orcs as evil.
: : It's okay because Orcs don't exist in our world so nobody feels
: : discriminated. But isn't the underlying philosophy the same?
: : The same goes for Klingons (in the older films), Gremlins etc.
: : etc. etc. You could well argue the authors are venting an
: : inhibited racism, a racsim that is potentially just as
: : dangerous as *real* racism.

: I think different people would tell you different things about racism. The dictionary definition says it's the finding of racial differences without scientific support (such as claiming one race is superior to another in intelligence, etc.), or the application of such beliefs through discriminatory or segregational actions.

: In plain English, racism is saying one group of people is better than another simply because they were born that way. Tolkien doesn't do that. Even the Orcs are portrayed sympathetically, and Gandalf feels sympathy for all of Sauron's slaves, not just the human ones.

: It's simple enough to exclude portions of the book and build up a charge of racism against Tolkien, but such a charge would be bogus because you HAVE to exclude portions of the book to build it.

Agreed. Don't forget Aragorn included the orcs in his warning at Helm's Deep.

Sean