Subtle Racism in Lotro

[Bauglin]

1) Examples of swarthy/half-breed. On this particularly issue, I think the game is actually "worse" than the book. Just flipping through the books, it looks like Tolkien uses the adjective "swarthy" a lot (not sure about half-breed), in many different contexts. It does not completely overlap with the larger white = good, black = evil issue.

Lack of specific in-game examples of the use "swarthy" is noted. It never registered for me, so I have absolutely no idea what the context is in the game. And thus, I can't decide if you have a point. Context really is everything.

But after thinking about it, there's another issue here - how, exactly, would you portray the provinciality of the Shirefolk or Bree-landers, specifically their distrust of outsiders, in a way that couldn't be construed in some way, shape, or form as racism? How would you portray the disgust that free peoples have towards Saruman's half-orcs without coming out against real-life mixed-race people?

I'd argue that, ultimately, you can't, without tripping over yourself with euphemisms or completely rewriting the original. And as I said in my previous post, I'd rather see the original context preserved rather than see it twisted to fit some modern political agenda.

2) Use of Queer. There would be implicit homophobia if gay relationships existed in the game world, but only among the evil races, who were then described as "queer folk" because of allowing them i.e. gay union = evil people, similar to swarthy/half-breed = evil.

Nope, sorry, that doesn't fly. You can't be offended by one "hate" word, yet not be offended by another. If you're out to find offense, at least be consistent.

3) Dark Continent. Bringing up the "romantic" origin of the word is interesting. What are the romantic tropes involved with this expression? Usually a white explorer off among the terrifying dark natives rescuing a helpless virgin. This is the "Eurocentric bias" in the expression.

Sure, it's Eurocentric - so what? Every story or description is going to be some kind of "-centric." Why is it suddenly a bad thing if you stick "Euro" in front of that suffix?

And again, I didn't mean "romantic" in the "guy meets girl" sense either, but in the sense of describing something unknown to the author or his audience. Africa was, after all, the last great terrestrial frontier, and it was anyone's guess as to what might be found (yes, by Europeans - again, so what?) in the still-unexplored regions.

As for your example, it shows exactly what happens when people go looking for the offense, instead of looking at the context. In fact, one line in the article captures my point exactly: "As much as I believe in racial sensitivity, I draw the line at torturing the language or censoring our use of it to accommodate the hypersensitivities of the ignorant."

Another bandwagon has entered the discussion and wants a slice of the PC pie.

Since I'm the one who brought up the word "queer" and its use in the books, I'm guessing you're referring to me. If so, you might have missed my point - I mentioned the word, not to show offense, but to show that it's way too easy to find offense if you deliberately ignore the context.

Other than this possible misattribution, I agree with you wholeheartedly.