calimac

A sound argument (and well stated), to which I would add one other point: That Tolkien's "racial essentializing" does not prevent his actively celebrating romantic attraction between different groups. The history of Middle-Earth as a whole is shaped by mortal men falling in love with elf-women; there is the more on-camera love of Faramir with his Numenorean heritage for the warrior maiden Eowyn; there is Gimli's hopeless devotion to Galadriel, with its flavor of the courtly love that (I have the impression) Tolkien didn't much admire in the original, but which in turn is the spring from which flows Gimli and Legolas's friendship. At least in the real world, enthusiastic racists tend to be against that sort of thing. . . .