[*Varda*]

I personally didn't see any hint of racism or sexism in the books. The line about the black men coming out of Far Harad doesn't appear to me to be racist. They live in the south, where a lot of people are generally darker naturally. Or it could just have been a descriptive term to show that evil was black (but not in terms of skin colour). Saruman was evil, but he was white. Also, it seems natural for many of the evil people to be darker skinned as evil seemed to indicate shadows, darkness etc. As for the lack of dark skinned good people, this just seems to reflect the times and society Tolkien lived in. At that time, black people weren't such a large part of the population, and therefore may not have featured a lot in LoTr. These are just a few of my ideas, they probably don't mean much.