...Really?
This type of thought coming from MIT makes me question my sanity.
> If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of his legacy (and that of many other contemporary and prior fantasy writers).
It seems rather par for the course. And it makes sense. In both fantasy and sci-fi, inhuman species are often caricatured by their "race" and usually don't get enough time to flesh out three-dimensional characters. Because it's hard to imagine completely alien societies with personalities that span as full as range as humanity's.
Just as a lot of the tropes of classical Athenian Theatre are alien to us nowadays doesn't mean its not great art.
Specifically to race in fantasy, I agree that LoTR wasn't really the place for that. However, D&D is actually the perfect place- RPG sourcebooks are expected to worldbuild, and describe fantasy worlds in detail. So it's a useful thing to think of when exploring an RPG.
It's really a joke, but hysterically brilliant.
(Edit - including a snippet of the 'commentary' below):
ZINN: You’ve spoken to me before about Mordor’s lack of access to the mineral wealth that the Dwarves control.
CHOMSKY: If we’re going to get into the socio-economic reasons why certain structures develop in certain cultures… it’s mainly geographical. We have Orcs in Mordor — trapped, with no mineral resources — hemmed in by the Ash Mountains, where the “free peoples” of Middle Earth can put a city, like Osgiliath, and effectively keep the border closed.
ZINN: Don’t forget the Black Gate. The Black Gate, which, as Tolkien points out, was built by Gondor. And now we jump to the Orcs chopping down the trees in Isengard.
CHOMSKY: A terrible thing the Orcs do here, isn’t it? They destroy nature. But again, what have we seen, time and time again?
ZINN: The Orcs have no resources. They’re desperate.
CHOMSKY: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.
ZINN: Desperate to compete with the economic powerhouses of Rohan and Gondor.
"Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it."
Dwarves (and Elves) can also see in the dark and can live for many hundreds of years. In many ways a character's race is a set of advantages derived from genetic qualities.
This isn't race in a human racial sense. The word "race" is used, when biologically speaking it should likely be species.
these all seem true to me these all seem racist to me these all seem reasonable given the fantasy aspect of D&D and what I am used to from stories
It's a fairly common criticism of fantasy—that entire races and ethnic groups are pretty commonly stereotyped.