Tolkien is not racist. I will start with that, because it is a handy conversation starter.
But what is Tolkien's ideas on race?
First of all, in Tolkien's Middle-Earth, race is not defined by skin color.
Sure, we assume that most of the people we meet have light-colored skin, but that is a quirk of their appearance, nothing more.
Nothing more is made of skin color than hair color.
For all we know, there might be the occasional 'Black' dude in Gondor, and perhaps Faramir is one of them. Who knows.
It is perfectly natural to have a fantasy world where race is not based on skin color.
This is fantasy, after all.
Race in Tolkien means men, hobbits, elves, ents, and dwarves.
The free races in Middle-Earth are shown as all good and decent and worthy of respect.
There might be conflict and misunderstanding between them, and this is shown to be a regrettable thing.
But what about orcs?
What about trolls?
Orcs and trolls are not races.
They are servants of the Dark Lord.
They are members of the free races of Middle-Earth- the same free races that we see free as elves and ents and dwarves- whose ancestors were long ago kidnapped and made slave soldiers of the Dark Lord.
If an elf were a member of the Nazi Army, and their ancestors had served in the Nazi army for thousands of years, they would end up just like the Orcs.
Orcs and trolls are not races.
There are no evil races.
There is only the Dark Lord.
All the evil in the Orcs and trolls comes from the Dark lord.
What about men?
There are men in the northwest of Middle Earth, who are portrayed as more advanced and virtuous, and men from the far east and south who are portrayed as more dangerous.
But the only difference between them is geography.
The men who are closer to Rivendell and Lothlorien and Moria of old are more advanced because they have had a chance to learn from Rivendell and Lothlorien and Moria.
The men of the south and the east are closer to Mordor and the Dark Lord than they are to Rivendell, and have had less opportunity to learn from Rivendell, and the Dark Lord has had more opportunity to mess with them.
The proof of Tolkien's attitudes towards these men, and towards race in general, is what happens when one of these marginalized fringe people is pardoned by Aragorn and our heroes.
The Dunlendings are a marginalized people who the Dark Lord has had an opportunity to seduce, just like many of the men of the far east and far south.
They fight on the side of Saruman, doing the Dark Lord's bidding, since the Dark Lord is using Saruman and playing him like a fiddle.
After the battle, Aragorn pardons the Dunlendings who had fought against them.
The Dunlendings are suprpised. They reply that they have been taught that men like those of Gondor kill and eat Dunlendings for food.
They were not expecting kindness from Aragorn's people.
These are the kind of lies that the Dark Lord told to seduce people like the Dunlendings.
And with this, Tolkien is telling us that problems between one group of humans and another- whether you think of them as races or not- are a tragic result of the lies of darkness and evil.
Racism is the lie of the Devil, or of evil.
Tolkien is intentionally introducing the racist colonialist trope of the dangerous people of the east and the south, corresponding to Africa and Asia, in order to subvert it when he shows us one of these peoples, the Dunlendings, showing us that these people are not a dark enemy but rather victims of the Dark Lord- or in our world, victims of European colonialism.
He chooses the Dunlandings to do this with so that our heroes don't have to go many hundreds of miles out of their way into the far south or far east in order for Tolkien to make his point by subverting the stereotype- or worse have to wait until the Dark Lord is defeated before making his point. The middle of the story is where this kind of point should be made, for it does not have anything to do with how the main conflict is resolved, or the personal lives and interests of the main characters.
That is Tolkien on race.
Hope you have enjoyed this!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson