Can the book be considered rascist?

[Lush]

I think if you're one of those people who actively try to get Huckleberry Finn banned and burned, then yeah, you may see racism in the LotR. I just think that Tolkien wrote the classic European "fairy-story," and such stories do not have multi-culturalism and political correctness in their root, for better or for worse.
And, I like the idea of how the black men Tolkien described were more of a product of evil than an African or Arabic race. Certainly, the familiar physical characteristics are present, but Tolkien's point, I believe, was to draw a big fat line between the evil and the good, as a classic fairy-story writer would. Something to the extent of "people from Africa are bad, kids!" was definitely not his intetion, as far as I can understand.
Furthermore, you can't judge the past using the standards of the present.

[ April 16, 2002: Message edited by: Lush ]