There’s a bit of truth to this troll post. My relevant training here is in cultural studies, which is based in a Marxist understanding of cultural changes during the 1950s and 60s in England and its colonies.

Tolkien & them were witnessing the same changes in the same country. https://twitter.com/bieljambene/status/1266738159179780096

Tolkien had many years on Stuart Hall, but they both went to Oxford! So in many ways the major influence for the creation of orcs within the fantasy world comes from the same site as this critique of British colonial imperialism/understanding how culture is a site of struggle.

While one’s body of work sought to fantasize over English politics and the possibility of a heroic national subject that becomes recognized as such both nationally and internationally, another’s sought to critique Israel’s invasion of the Suez Canal and the UK’s involvement.

Because to become a hero within the framework of British imperialism means, of course, that there must be a colonial subject. And while we throw around the idea that orcs are POC, in this case, I think it’s more accurate to say Tolkien was probs scared of the Windrush Generation.

In 1948, due to labor shortages after the war and shit going down in the colonies and the world over, 492 workers from the Caribbean landed in the UK ready for work, and were met with massive hostilities.

The orcs of middle earth don’t become politically viable until the lord of the rings; the hobbit has more traditional based forces of evil; its not until Caribbean migration into England is in full that the Tolkien imaginary shifts towards orcs. This is not to say they ARE orcs.

But rather, the British imagination that Tolkien complexly/simultaneously accepts and refuses has created the category of dangerous invader. This is why when we go to orcs, they have the capacity for folks to project both black American and asian American experience on it.

Because the orc is that imagined representation of the fear of young Caribbean workers entering England in the 1950s, whereas before English colonialism allowed for the greater England population to remain generally apart from the people and resources whom they exploited.

So when we see that Tolkien MUST have been deeply influenced by current events in British history, and that the current event was likely the landing of the Windrush in 1948 and ensuing black migration from the colonies to the metropole, a Marxist cultural analysis makes sense.

So let’s say this again so the trolls understand this precision: Tolkien’s orc is partially the fantastical creation of the fear of Caribbean migration to England in the 1950s while also remaining open to further re-interpretations, especially given a non-English audience.

LOTR becomes popular in the 60s as the world moves right and the left, losing faith in the Soviet Union, must come to terms with a new leftist possibility that is distinct from the failures they see in the current communist bloc. Some find it in cultural studies.

Others, like Tolkien, return to a more liberal understanding that posits equality and tolerance of colonized people without fully engaging in their decolonial demands. This is why orcs are the way they are: they are the unrealized potential of a leftist imagination.

Unrealized potentials fall short and become caricature for actual leftist decolonial movements. But Tolkien does not abhor the “so called asiastic” qualities he assigns to orcs. He would probably say he likes orcs! This is the liberal position.

So like. Think about how fantasy race is historically grounded. Think about how it emerges in reaction to historical anxieties. Think about how subsequent generations latch onto the re-significations possible in articulating the meaning of stories.

And think about the possibility of fiction that emerges from one’s understand of like Williams says the STRUCTURES OF FEELING across a generation. Race, in Tolkien, we see, allows us to understand that structure.