Problematic Orcs

Submission 35,161

Part of a series on Dungeons and Dragons. [View Related Entries]

About

Problematic Orcs refers to a viral debate over whether the fictional humanoid orcs from the game Dungeons and Dragons could be viewed as problematic representations of racial bigotry.

Origin

On April 25th, 2020, Twitter user @MonkipiQuinn^[6] tweeted a picture of a description of "Roleplaying an Orc" in Dungeons and Dragons with the message "Cw blatant racism" (shown below). The account was subsequently placed on private.

"Most orcs have been indoctrinated into a life of destruction and slaughter. But unlike creatures who by their very Nature are evil, such as gnolls, it’s possible that an orc, if raised outside its culture, could develop a limited capacity for empathy, love, and compassion.

No matter how domesticated an orc might seem, its blood lust flows just beneath the surface. With its instinctive love of battle and its desire to prove its Strength, an orc trying to live within the confines of civilization is faced with a difficult task."

Precursor

Orcs have been read and debated as a racist trope for decades, particularly in regards to J.R.R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings book series. For example, some argue that descriptions given by characters in The Lord of the Rings for the creation of Orcs could amount to fear of race mixing and eugenics. In Lord of the Rings the character Treebeard says, "It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!" In the article, "From the Shire to Charlottesville: How Hobbits Helped Rebuild the Dark Tower for Scientific Racism," writer Andrew Stewart says":^[7]^[8]

In each of these selections, we find clear manifestations of mid-twentieth century scientific racism. The final, which alarmingly spells out the notion of ‘race mixing’ as a great sin, would easily be at home in the mouth of a Klansman were ‘Orcs’ and ‘Men’ turned to ‘Blacks’ and ‘whites.’

In private letters, Lord of the Rings-author J.R.R. Tolkein wrote, "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."

The debate continued through Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Some accused Jackson's depiciton of the Orcs as being similar to "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II."

However, because of the era that the character were created, some do not see this as an allegation of racism or bigotry toward Tolkein but rather a product of the era in which he lived. Still, others have pushed back against these arguments. In another letter, Tolkien wrote:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction … only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.

Spread

On April 26th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @videodante tweeted "the ideology of 'this group of sentient beings is unable to overcome the inherent animal nature of their bloodline' is the same as irl racism" (shown below).

Meanwhile, Redditor RecoveringH20Addict posted a Lord of the Rings meme about the debate, in which Gandalf is shown saying "Be silent. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth," in reaction to Twitter users accusing Tolkien of racism. Within 24 hours, the post gathered upwards of 29,800 points (98% upvoted) on /r/HistoryMemes.^[2]

That day, Carl Benjamin, a member of the right-wing UK Independence Party, uploaded a video about the controversy to the Akkad Daily YouTube channel titled "'Orcs' Trends on Twitter" (shown below, left). Also on April 26th, YouTuber Hero Hei uploaded a video titled "'Orcs are trending, because woke Twitter is calling them 'racist'" (shown below, right).

Twitter user @ammourazz published a list of resources for explaining this criticism of orcs. They wrote, "Hey so if you’re stumbling into the D&D orc discourse and are one of the handful of people here with an open-mind and a genuine desire to understand what’s going on, welcome! This thread is gonna be for you; a master list of resources that explain the problem if you’re willing." The post received more than 7,200 likes and 2,700 retweets in less than three days (shown below).

On April 27th, the news site ComicBook.com^[1] published an article titled "Why Orcs Are Problematic in Dungeons & Dragons." That day, journalist Gita Jackson tweeted^[4] a thread about her exhaustion with the debate, saying "we have been talking about this for a hundred years tho and I don't care anymore."