There's a deaded comment by nostromo here that I thought was good and don't see why it was killed. The interpretation of LotR as a book about the domination of non-white peoples is really not that much of a stretch.

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No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", men who are described as black-skinned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings).

I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.

>I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.

It's a stretch because Indians and other people live on this Earth and not in some fantasy reality created by an author.

Sure if you want to imagine that one species/race in the book is visually akin to a race/group/country of real humans that's fine, why would it matter.

This sort of argument to me is like saying that the books stereotype elephants because the great war beast Mamulik (sp?) are elephantine.

In short I think you're over analysing it, it's just a yarn.