GTA: Warsaw? Count me in too.
Tolkien also depicted the Numenoreans that fell from grace as base and evil as well. Also, if you're referring to the Haradrim, my vibe from them was always Middle Eastern, as they were described as "ruddy." Khand and Rhun were both more of a Nomadic flavor, so I'm not sure where you're getting any African-style people in the lore at all. (It's been awhile since I've dove into the Silmarillion, though, so forgive me if I'm misremembering.)

I'm not sure how that's relevant, but I'll just make a correction here - slavery in ancient Rome, unlike slavery in America, had no basis in racial prejudice or any ideas of "lesser" humans.
From "Roman Britain" by Peter Salway
"There is little evidence that the Romans had any general racial prejudice in the modern sense [...] on the whole (they) treated a man as he was now rather than the background from which he had come (...) there was nothing immutable about a man's position."

I guess it's a good example of how anachronisticly assuming racism can be misleading.

Maybe, but that proves nothing. Pretty much every work of fiction not featuring a "diverse" enough cast can be felt to be racist by some people today. There is a very real difference between something indeed casually racist, born out of a deeply ingrained idea of the inferiority of some race, and something that merely may seem racist to the changed sensibilities of a later era. To conflate the two is to utterly misunderstand and misrepresent things.

It's probably this:
"...out of Far Harad black Men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues."

The meta history of LOTR is that it was dramatized by Tolkien based on the hobbits' diaries. Imagine a Hobbit who has never seen an Afro-African before. How would he describe a charging zulu warrior?

Although the "white eyes" bit doesn't sound human, so maybe he really meant half-trolls, only black ones?

Yes, the Greeks were scared by big hairy dudes whose speech sounded like "bar! bar!".

Does Tolkien ever explicitly state that the (human and elven) characters are light-skinned, or is that just our default assumption?

It is explicitly stated that elves are fair skinned. As for humans, it depended where they were from. If from the west, they are fair skinned (and coincidentally generally 'good'), if from the east, they are either 'swarthy' or dark, like the Haradrim, or referred to as ''slant-eyed' like the Easterlings ( both groups were coincidentally allied with Sauron).

Wow dude. I gave you the common courtesy of clarifying my position 5 times now since those initial statements, but you just keep harping on about them, ignoring it. You're literally now like the kid who is crying about 'you changed the rules mid-game!! you started it!!'. Just wow. At this point, I'm wondering if you're even serious anymore. Who cares what was initially said?? The conversation has moved way past that, and everyone has the right to clarify and even amend stuff they said pages ago. There are no written 'rules' here to say that it's illegal(rofl) to do that. Acknowledge the clarifications or move on. Jesus. "but muh orcs".

Again everyone seems to be in agreement, as you're basically describing the Vistani/Romani situation.

The Vistani relate to point 1, not point 2. I'm surprised and amazed you missed that part (also saddened).

Yeah we've had that discussion already and you seem incapable of noting that you could still create cookie-cutter stereotypical Orcs if you wanted to...yet the option to do something more complex, more interesting would be there. But you go ahead and disagree with no reason.

Where are you getting this from? You think that's how this all started? You think that's air you're breathing? Hm.

You sure do seem like it. You've gone on for pages about it, ranting about how whiney people on twitter forced these guys to make some equality changes to their product, without even realising that's not at all what happened. In any case, you belittle the issue to the point of considering it a non-issue, even though you've stated many times the artists are free to do as they like. Seems to me like according to you, they are free to do as you like and want them to.

It's true that they didn't make a distinction which we'd call "racist" in the sense, other people were inferior by upbringing, but they could be taught and even raise in the ranks of Roman society. The Romans just thought their culture vastly superior. The neighbour deserved to be conquered, "tamed", enslaved (Celts and Germans were especially in high demand). This may not be as bad as the "you're not more than cattle" racism in the American slavery, or the "you're vermin and need to be exterminated" antisemitism of Nazi Germany towards the Jews, but it's really a nice attitude either from today's point of views. From the Romans it was the natural state of affairs of course.

I agree that it shouldn't be conflated, and by all means it shouldn't be inflated way out of proportion, but it shouldn't be forgotten either. "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." (Edmund Burke)
I don't think we want to go back to making disgusting stuff like "The Birth of a Nation" or "Jud Süß". But we also don't want Twitter lynch mobs raging because in some story some third row character fulfills some negative stereotype. So where we want to draw the line is a matter of constant negotiation about a moving target. The most important thing here is to take the heat out of the discussion and stay calm. That also means that uncalled for and self-proclaimed White Knights need to step back and let the creators, and the people actually affected speak. So for the rewriting of the Vistani WotC got themselves an actual Romani consultant, that's probably a good thing, no?

The "diverse cast" has of course become it's own trope, to the point where it becomes annoying or it's own (unintended) parody.

---

Why is this topic important to me? Because I live in a part of Germany where right-wing extremism, racism and xenophobia have been on the rise in the last few years to a scary degree. The region is even called "Dunkeldeutschland" (Dark Germany) by the rest of the country. Yes, it's that bad. Racist and xenophobic tropes like "those refugees all want to rape German women and stab us in the back with their knives" are endlessly repeated and echoed in the filter bubbles of social media and at RL regulars' tables. The reasons are manifold and especially here rooted in both in post-war and post-reunification history. But there's a boiling bubble of frustration and hatred just below the surface. There has been violence.
So using certain negative stereotypes in your fictional story - even if seemingly harmless or unintentionally - might yield you applause from people you don't want to be associated with. And it might result in the annoyance or even anger of the people currently fighting against this hatred and xenophobia. As a creator you should be aware of that. Freedom of art is a thing, but art doesn't exist in a vacuum.

So let me get this straight. The only harm that is considered actual harm, is pretty much physical harm? With maybe some severely debilitating mental issues? Who you are you to belittle any other kind of harm? Who are you to say it's not harmful when there's harm to your employability and thus livelihood? Harm to your reputation and how people treat you in society? And yes, possible physical and mental harm to you personally due to (violent) people believing in these degrading stereotypes (like history has shown will happen)?

Who are you? Apart from GameRager of course. The display of chronic lack of empathy is astounding.

"Most"? Where's your proof of this very strongly worded anecdotal example? Put your money where your mouth is.

No. I already explained this. If there is wrong committed and harm becomes fellow man, and you can do something about it, then do it. You don't actually have to be the one getting beaten up or knifed across the street to realise that physical violence is harmful. There are plenty of other ways to realise that and maybe even help the poor soul getting beaten up or knifed. Your assertion is just plain wrong.

I'm sure that's what you do.

Baby steps, young padiwan. Baby steps.

Thanks for confirming you've never held a professional job in a bigger firm, or just know nothing about that.

Such mental acrobatics. I'm almost impressed. But yeah. You think I would be more happy with more sexism and racism in society? After everything you've read from me? k then.

This is such bull. I've already explained this 3 ways 3 times, but let's try again with an (extreme) example.

You're saying that it's not ok to discriminate against some people or be intolerant of some people, if you call yourself tolerant. You are saying that we need to tolerate neo-nazis for example, accept them, maybe even embrace them. After all, we cannot discriminate against them, right? Wrong. You don't have to be tolerant of intolerance. If someone is so hateful and wants to bring harm to a fellow human being, you can easily not condone that as a tolerant person. Some would even say that's the whole point. Nevermind my previous points about how those who propose your argument, are usually racists projecting their own prejudice against people. What say you GameRager?

Everytime you open your mouth, you make it worse. You show how little empathy you have, and you belittle important things, because you don't understand anything from the point of view of the affected party.

The issue isn't that 346 Romani people made a petition and went to court to prove that their livelihoods and reputation in society was deeply affected by promoting these degrading stereotypes in society.

The issue is that it's wrong. That's why they're making these changes. Even if indirectly they're doing it for the fear of lost revenue (i.e. money) if they're afraid of a bad reputation, they're still ultimately doing it because it's wrong. And this ties directly into what I said before about professionalism and firms wanting to do this all the time.

So first you insult me by saying I must be arguing in bad faith (after all, who in their right mind would oppose prejudice??? lol), then you insult me by lobbing me in together with 'those people in social media'. How do you know how much social media I use? Maybe I just use it for family stuff? Irrelevant. You're now literally just assuming shit about me.

First of all, I dislike the term 'opposing view', it sounds like it's the enemy, and there really are no enemies on vidya gaming forums. And if you must know, someone recently convinced me or argued that a Linux version of Galaxy 2.0 wouldn't be that useful actually for us (for non-native games).

So there you have it. GameRager is proven wrong, yet again.

What livelihood is that?

Literal WTF moment right here!

In the example, and commonly, it's employability. Just to be clear, in the context of explaining something, I used an example. I might even edit the post to make that clearer, as people tend to pick something out of context and attribute different meanings to it. Wouldn't want this to become another Gersen situation that went on for pages after clarifying it 7(!) times...
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