Prologue: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides discussion
Inter-Hobbit Relations in the Books
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I think Tolkien's replies to Nazis in one of his Letters ought to be enough proof to anyone who believes that Tolkien *intentionally* upheld racist and/or white supremacist notions.But it remains that he was a man of his times, and it shows. Tolkien's literature is very white (and cis-sexist, and gender essentialist, and his Catholicism does bleed through in places as well). That doesn't make him a bad writer, nor a bad person. But I think it's fair to say that he wasn't cognizant of (and therefore didn't combat) all his cultural biases, and they out in the massive amounts of prose that he wrote.
That all heroes are fair-skinned is typical of whiteness and white-privilege, and like all such things, needs no negative intent to be such. The Fallowhides, to my mind, were constructed to be the most "Elvish" of the Hobbit strains. Therefore, all this stuff about being "fair" - whether that's light-skinned, pretty, more cultured, or all the above.
Also, a key to understanding Tolkien: he's hearkening back to eras of history where ethnic group, nation, and culture were all sort of one thing and denoted your group in a rather thorough way, which was actually TRUE once upon a long time ago history, but not true NOW. Granted, it's oversimplified, of course - it's a fantasy novel after all - but to say "this group is their own ethnic group and they look different and have their own dress and have their own culture and language" isn't a racist "oh it's THEM and you can TELL" kind of thing, or at least, he very likely didn't mean it to be. Rather, his world is divided into polities that bear more resemblance to Dark Age/post-Roman clan-kingdoms in some parts of Europe than they do to modern notions of states and communities as they stand today.
But to get back to the thesis - even if Tolkien intended no racism, there are racist implications that point to Tolkien's position as a white, Christian man in Europe in the 1940s.
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As for the debate over the meaning of "fair-skinned," I've seen people talking about that in relation to elves. I think in that case in can be taken to mean light-skinned or beautiful or both, etc. and then same might be said of the Fallohides, however seeing as he specified that the Harfoots had "browner" skin and then described the Fallohides as having "fairer" skin, I'm inclined to believe he was talking of color in that case.
Oh absolutely he was talking about colour, and this fairness of skin is linked to other also Elvish qualities, such as higher culture (poetry, etc). And of course it's problemmatic that these elite, fair-skinned Fallohides are the leaders of Hobbit-kind.I am inclined to think that this type of thing, which to us is so clearly problemmatic, was something that Tolkien himself probably had no concept of whatsoever. Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but rather is evidence of a bias he didn't know of, and therefore didn't correct, and therefore we can see it crop up again and again in his various writings.
...which means we have to wrestle with it again and again as well
Something I thought may be of interest- though I have not delved very deep into Toilken the author and the times he lived in-Upon reading his description of the Harfoots, I believed perhaps his use of "browner skin" might mean they were darker due to being outdoors more as a race- than the more creative inclined race of the Fallohides who were interested in language/song more than their counterparts and may have spent less time in the open air around Mountains and more time in the shelter of the forest. So more of a farmer complex perhaps?
Also found in interesting that although the Harfoots are the ones who worked with Dwarves- the Stoors have a more Dwarf like build (broader, heavier, large hands and feet) and could grow down on their faces- it seems an interesting choice on Toilken's behalf to make one race so Dwarf Like and yet attribute them to working more with men while writing the smaller, beardless Harfoots had stronger relations with Dwarves in the past.
I don't think he meant to be racist, but it's pretty obvious that his biases seeped through. Last year I read a couple of books dealing with colonialism and the British empire, and this part seemed to come right out of that mentality. After all, if we were only to look at the UK, then the dark-skinned races wouldn't be a numerical majority, but if we were to look at the context of the entire British empire of the early 20th century, then it becomes more obvious.On the other hand, it also felt like a class thing. "Browner" could mean "more tanned due to working in the sun". I mean, we know that hobbits like "good tilled earth" but the richer hobbits (like Bilbo) don't seem to be doing the tilling themselves.
Yeah, Diana that makes a lot of sense. If browner just means more tanned, this becomes a class issue instead of a race one!
I'm more inclined to see it as referring to the color of their skin or he would've mentioned farming when he was describing their appearance. He writes that they all like to be outside, they just prefer different terrains, e.g. highlands and hillsides vs woodlands. That's just my opinion though.
There is a definite class element to the Shire anyway. He mentions poorer families and "Great" families so there is a social hierarchy.
Oh it's obvious that it's about race. I was just saying that it had an additional dimension of class/caste to it as well
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This doesn't fit in any of the discussion boards but has anyone noticed that this makes no evolutionary sense whatsoever?"The Hartfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger, and they preferred flat lands and riversides.
Hill and mountains ALWAYS produce heavier built people. Rivers and shoresides sometimes lead to an increased upper body muscular mass (think swimmers' bodies), but only in individuals, not in entire populations (because that would mean Lamarckian evolution beats Darwinian evolution)
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Goats are a total mystery to me. Sometimes I think everyone's playing a prank on me and goats aren't even real! As for humans, mountain and hill dwelling people usually have adaptations like larger muscle mass and bigger feet, think Scottish highlanders. If the area they're from is high enough they also get barrel chests, think natives of the Andes or Himalayan Sherpas.
I think in LOTR the large feet are supposed to help Stoors wade through mudbanks or make it easier to swim somehow (I can see it if they're webbed). Tolkein makes a point of saying that Stoors also wear shoes sometimes when it's muddy, so mud might be a significant challenge for them
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Maybe. Tiny creatures do follow a COMPLETELY different set of rules, but they have to be small enough for things like gravity and surface tension to work differently on them than they do on men.I think this is the point we have to make allowance for the fantasy world
This is not so relevant to where the conversation has taken a turn, but I want to post a gentle reminder.Racism in Europe, then and now, manifests and functions very differently from racism in the USA. In the USA, colour is pretty much the biggest determinant in racism, and anti-blackness was the foundation of racist politics in the USA, with little exception.
By contrast, in Europe, racism is more xeno-racism; it's more based if you are foreign or an outsider. In Europe, the conception of white was based on the Jews, and later the Rroma, as the fundamental Other. Not that colourism isn't and wasn't a thing - it very much was, and is! - but it wasn't the founding basis for racism and ethno-supremacy the way it was in the USA. (And people who function as or assimilate into whiteness in the USA, to this day do not have the option in Europe.)
I say all this because I think if we are to continue to discuss racism in Tolkien as we continue reading his works, it's important to realize the context in which they are written. And Tolkien, as a European white christian man, and not an American one, would have had a very different conception of how whiteness functioned in his day than Americans do today, and it's important to realize this if we are to properly understand the cultural and social biases that influenced his writing.
(Also, it's a massive pet peeve of mine when people try to paste America-isms on not-America, because the world is not the USA, and the world does not function according to USA-ism, not then and not now.)
Exactly. And taking into consideration the time this was written, I'd say it was closer to British imperialism rather than modern forms of anti-multiculturalism.
BalinisBallin wrote: "Also, it's a massive pet peeve of mine when people try to paste America-isms on not-America, because the world is not the USA, and the world does not function according to USA-ism, not then and not now."This is spot on! (As is everything in that post)
People (Americans), especially on tumblr, often forget that not all societies face the same issues as American societies and they just seem to put their concepts on other societies anyway. It always makes me sigh and just go ahead.
Of course not every society or locale faces the same issues, I wish that was as obvious to Americans as it seems to be to us here.But even if various societies and cultures do share issues, it's still not right to make sweeping statements. Because in that case, it's not that they don't face the same issues, it's that local dynamics mean that these issues manifest differently. For example, we here are discussing racism - intentional and otherwise - as present in a piece of literature. Most of us here are VERY LIKELY living in the USA, if not actually American. However, while racism exists worldwide, how it socially manifests and functions - and even who it targets and HOW - can be very different.
The same can be said of misogyny. Misogyny exists worldwide, but the way white women in American face misogyny is going to be very different to how a Rroma woman faces misogyny in France, so the solutions for one will not neccessarily work for the other. Again, oversimplifying, but --
--I've gone way off topic, and ought to return to the subject matter at hand.
SO SAURON NOT KNOWING ABOUT HOBBITS HOW'S THAT POSSIBLE IF HE'S A DEMIURGE
(seriously, how do Ainur and Maia not know that Hobbits exist until Gandalf stumbled across them, even Rohirrim remembered them, come on now.)
There is also the possibility that the hobbit distinctions have little to do with actual non white peoples. Scandanavian peoples understood themselves in the tenth century as being divided into three ethnically distinct groups. The story is in the Rígsþula, part of the same body of documents as the Prose Edda (where all the Dwarf names in The Hobbit come from). They are all children of Rig (Heimdall), one with Great Grandmother is the ugly and dark thrall or serf, the ruddy freeman child with grandmother, and the jarl child of mother, who is the shining special one.
There are also the differentiated "types" in the sagas and histories, which you see in names. Harald Fairhair, for instance, is of the stereotypical "Scandinavian" blonde tall blue eyed types, whereas Halfdan the Black has black hair, and might have been a little darker in complexion. The stereotypical scandanavian types were supposedly better leaders and politicians, whereas the others were better poets.
Whatever the truth of this, historians and archaeologists of
Tolkien's time certainly talked about these things, and he knew the Saga and mythological material quite well.
Indeed, if you look at the Silmarillion, the three houses of men that come over to the Elves area are in quite the same groupings as the Hobbits.
A final point is that all the groups are "mixed", in that it is only a "Fallowhide strain" that is there in the dominant families. The groups don't quite stick to the script, as the decidedly Harfoot Sam becomes the most important leader in the Shire's history, and a good poet to boot.
Harfoots are described as having "browner" skin and are referred to as the "most normal and representative Hobbit."
Stoors seem to have implied browner skin as well seeing as Tolkien does not specify otherwise and they are listed immediately after the Harfoots. Their main identifying characteristic is that they can grow some facial hair.
Fallohides are described as "fairer" skinned and are the least abundant type of Hobbit. They tend to enjoy poetry and literature and are also said to be "bolder and more adventurous" than other types of Hobbits. They are born leaders, often becoming chieftains of settlements of Harfoots and Stoors.
Keeping in mind the time period when The Lord of the Rings was written, what do you make of the fact that Tolkien wrote the fair skinned Hobbits as seemingly more "cultured" and natural leaders over the darker skinned Hobbits?
Would you consider this racism?
If so, do you think it was intentional or unintentional?
When Tolkien describes the Harfoots as "browner" do you interpret this to mean naturally dark-skinned, or just tanned? What do you think was Tolkien's intent?
I'd like to hear your thoughts and any other questions that come to mind!