When academia tries to “decolonize” fantasy, the result looks more like parody than progress. That’s what happened when a British university professor claimed that the depiction of orcs in the works of JRR Tolkien are somehow promoting racism.
According to a new report from The Telegraph, the University of Nottingham is now offering a course titled Decolonising Tolkien et al., which teaches students that the orcs in The Lord of the Rings represent people of color. The class, led by Dr. Onyeka Nubia, argues that the dark-skinned monsters and the so-called “eastern races” of Middle-earth are examples of “anti-African antipathy” and “ethnic chauvinism.”
Sam Hazeldine as “Adar” (left) in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
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In this course, the way Tolkien depicted evil creatures like orcs is framed as an outgrowth of colonialism and racism — a narrative in which the light-skinned heroes of the West stand as symbols of white virtue while the darker, foreign races represent villainy. According to Nubia’s interpretation, that’s not coincidence; it’s bias encoded in literature.
Rewriting the Rings
Dr. Nubia reportedly told students that The Lord of the Rings mirrors a worldview that “casts Africans as the natural enemy of whites.” He claims that Tolkien’s Haradrim, Easterlings, and Southrons are modeled on non-European civilizations presented as barbaric invaders, while the fair-skinned people of Gondor and Rohan embody moral purity. The course suggests that these depictions reflect a cultural hierarchy ingrained in British storytelling — not just in Tolkien’s work, but also in authors like C.S. Lewis, John Milton, and even William Shakespeare.
Robert Strange as Glûg in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
It doesn’t stop there. Nubia’s teaching reportedly extends to the idea that English literature itself has long been guilty of erasing diversity, portraying a “fictional, mono-ethnic England” that ignored the presence of Africans in medieval society. In short: fantasy worlds, epic poems, and Renaissance plays are all suspect under this lens of “decolonisation.”
Fans and Scholars Respond
Unsurprisingly, the notion that orcs represent people of color has not gone over well with Tolkien fans. Prominent commentators like the Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic have openly mocked the claim, calling it a deliberate misreading of the author’s intentions. Tolkien himself wrote repeatedly that his stories were not allegories — a point many scholars continue to emphasize.
A screenshot from Lord of The Rings: Shadow of Mordor that showcased WB’s patented Nemesis System – YouTube, Shadow-Man
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The claim also creates a logical contradiction: if orcs, who are depicted in Tolkien literature as twisted monsters serving pure evil, are supposed to stand in for real-world racial groups, then the academic argument itself becomes offensive and racist. It assigns humanity’s ugliest fictional villains to real people in the name of anti-racism — a circular irony that only academia could produce.
Injecting Race Where It Doesn’t Belong
There’s a difference between analyzing literature and rewriting it to suit modern ideological obsessions. The Lord of the Rings is a work of high fantasy — a moral mythology rooted in Tolkien’s Catholic faith, philological background, and lifelong fascination with language and myth. To retroactively treat it as racial propaganda is as absurd as calling Beowulf “Nordic colonialism” or accusing The Odyssey of promoting “Mediterranean privilege.”
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2024), Amazon MGM Studios
The truth is simpler: Tolkien’s good-versus-evil dichotomy mirrors the moral universe of ancient myth, not modern identity politics. Light and darkness are spiritual metaphors — not racial descriptors. His monsters are monstrous because they embody corruption, not because they have darker skin tones.
And yet, modern academia keeps trying to drag Middle-earth into its cultural crossfire. It’s not enough to debate Tolkien’s worldbuilding or moral themes — now, professors want to “decolonize” the very concept of myth.
The Broader Trend
The University of Nottingham’s Tolkien course isn’t an isolated case. British literature as a whole is under renovation by “sensitivity experts.” In 2023, publishers reissued Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda with hundreds of words altered or removed to make them less “offensive.” A week later, the James Bond novels received similar treatment, with racial descriptors and period-accurate dialogue scrubbed out of Ian Fleming’s text.
Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures
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This push to cleanse and reinterpret older works always begins with “re-evaluation.” But before long, it becomes revision — the replacement of one generation’s imagination with another’s politics.
If Tolkien’s Middle-earth can be redefined as a racial allegory, then no story is safe from ideological rewriting. The next step is inevitably censorship, under the banner of progress.
The Real Legacy
J.R.R. Tolkien was a veteran of the First World War, a devout man who detested totalitarianism and racial supremacy. In a 1938 letter, he even rejected German racial theories outright, describing his distaste for “wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.” To accuse such a man of promoting racism through fictional goblins is to erase his moral convictions entirely.
Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The irony is that Tolkien’s legendarium was written to unite — to build a mythology for England that celebrated courage, friendship, sacrifice, and hope. The concept of Tolkien orcs somehow equating to racism doesn’t illuminate that story; it distorts it. It tells students to look for sin where none exists, to read malice into imagination.
Maybe that’s the biggest tragedy of all. Instead of inspiring students to explore the language, theology, and myth that shaped one of the greatest stories ever told, a British university now teaches them to see monsters as metaphors for race. It’s a grim lesson in how academia can twist art into a morality play of its own making — one where the villain is always the past.
If this is what “decolonizing” literature looks like, then perhaps it’s time to free education from the colonization of ideology.
How do you feel about college professors trying to tie Tolkien orcs to racism? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
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This is what race-obsessed DEI hires like Nubia here will do. Deport her and defund the university.
These people are so obsessed with Tolkien’s racial slant that they don’t even notice that the geographical conflict in LOTR was always “west versus east,” not “north versus south.” Also, I doubt such a fervent critic of uncontrolled industrialization as Tolkien could have been a hater of “savage” peoples.
The Men of the West were a stand in for White Christian Europe vs the rest of the feral hordes that exist in the world. There’s a reason the Haradrim and the Corsairs of Umbar join the forces of Mordor, and it’s because they were clearly non-White. This isn’t a bad thing by the way. My personal interpretation was always that only the Men of the West had souls while the other peoples were less than human, like the dwarves. And I always saw Tolkien’s view of uncontrolled industrialization as the opposite of “savage” peoples. Two sides of the same coin.
Don’t tell them about Wuthering Heights, where the protagonist’s potential southern Gypsy or Indian roots were meant to symbolise his wildness and who was always played by purebred English actors with “evil faces”.
I’m sure it’s been said by countless others but I’ll say it here as well; if they see the orcs are black people then that’s THEIR perspective, not everyone else’s.
A pretentious academian trying to generate controversy and draw attention to her course by promoting racism and division; how arrogant she must be to think she speaks for Tolkien, when her comments about Orcs demonstrate that she has no clue about what he stood for or any sense of his moral values…
So the virtue signalling censoring, fascist-wokists tell us they equate Orcs and Goblins with POCs. Hmmm.
I thought lunacy and idiotism are not contagious, but I guess I was wrong…
[…] Options Include ‘Queer Crip Lit’ and ‘Decolonize Your Diet.’ ∟British University Claims Tolkien Orcs Represent People of Color and Lord of The Rings is Racist ∟It’s hard to be lulled into inaction by people calling you racist […]