I don’t truly understand how we still find ourselves divided along racial lines. I know it has a lot to do with class structure and the idea of ‘being better’ than another group, but can one race truly look at another and say ‘we are better’? Not if we are all nearly identical genetically. We are all humans. We are all different, That difference ought to strengthen the collective, but it seems to create lines instead. Read a few pages into any fantasy novel and you will find that division writ large. It ought not to be so heavy handed, but the truth of the matter is that Elves, Orcs, Trolls, etc. often act as stand ins for racial divides in our own cultures.
Tolkien was indeed an ass. Maybe a racist too, but I’m not going to go there right now.
The fact is that we are definitely responsible in many ways for applying our own sense of race to the racial divides created in these narratives–both as readers and as writers. These conflicts serve as a way for us to see ourselves and to see the other. It is heavy handed–perhaps even moreso than the other divide of zombies. No person looks at a Troll or an Orc and says, “well there goes a stand in for a white person.”
I want to move towards creating fantasy that does better. I don’t want to play out these racial divides as stands for our own. I want something different. It may take a while before I can get there.