I didn’t use to dismiss their testimony, I used it to object to you characterising the ‘people’ of the LOTR as if that meant the main characters who prosecute the war with Mordor. The writers of the LOTR are intended to be the Hobbits, who are explicitly peaceful etc. and who again explicitly don’t really understand the councils of the Wise etc. but are drafted in very late in the day. As for understanding how weaker people are treated, the evidence in the book shows that the hobbits were ignored early on, drafted in for a couple of incredibly dangerous missions by people more powerful than them, and then the society was left to the attacks of Saruman while two of its members were taking horrendous dangers. Of course they’re told that they’ve been being defended all along by Strider and co, but all they really know is that nothing has happened to them.
My map is for how we treat persons. The species in LOTR map to persons better than to non-persons.
While oppression isn’t explicitly condoned, there’s quite a lot of cases of ‘swarthy’ people, ‘Easterners’ etc. being bad. I don’t think you can say that imposing negative stereotypes that certain races are untrustworthy etc. isn’t part of the immoral part of racism. I agree there’s less of your latter sort, but doesn’t Gandalf talk about how the Numenorians have diminished themselves by mingling with lesser men?
I didn’t use to dismiss their testimony, I used it to object to you characterising the ‘people’ of the LOTR as if that meant the main characters who prosecute the war with Mordor. The writers of the LOTR are intended to be the Hobbits, who are explicitly peaceful etc. and who again explicitly don’t really understand the councils of the Wise etc. but are drafted in very late in the day. As for understanding how weaker people are treated, the evidence in the book shows that the hobbits were ignored early on, drafted in for a couple of incredibly dangerous missions by people more powerful than them, and then the society was left to the attacks of Saruman while two of its members were taking horrendous dangers. Of course they’re told that they’ve been being defended all along by Strider and co, but all they really know is that nothing has happened to them.
My map is for how we treat persons. The species in LOTR map to persons better than to non-persons.
While oppression isn’t explicitly condoned, there’s quite a lot of cases of ‘swarthy’ people, ‘Easterners’ etc. being bad. I don’t think you can say that imposing negative stereotypes that certain races are untrustworthy etc. isn’t part of the immoral part of racism. I agree there’s less of your latter sort, but doesn’t Gandalf talk about how the Numenorians have diminished themselves by mingling with lesser men?