Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tolkien and racism

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Article has a single reliable source and contains original research. This decision is without prejudice to creating an article discussing outside views and debate on this issue instead of presenting the outside views and debate, if properly sourced, neutral, and without original research. —Doug Bell ^talk 00:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tolkien and racism

Tolkien and racism (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This article is supposed to be about how some people want to see racism in Tolkien's writings, or in Tolkien himself. Notably the article is not at all clear on this. It is filled with original research, opinion, weasel words, and utter nonsense. -- Jordi·✆ 20:41, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete for reasons given above. -- Jordi·✆ 20:45, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - I agree with the nominator. This article is pretty much one big NPOV problem. Jayden54 21:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Belongs in a blog entry, not an encyclopedia Noclip 21:21, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete To be honest - I attempted to give this article a clear up a while back, trying to encourage those who had created it to citesome sources. No such luck, mostly because it is mostly generalised points with little basis. It's really a problem of NPOV but also of Original Research. Seems best to delete, with any vaguely related points put into the Tolkien/LOTR articles. michaelCurtis ^talk+ _{contributions} 21:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete — irredeemable personal essay filled with original research —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Epopt (talk • contribs).
  • Oops, yes, that was me ➥the Epopt 04:04, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup - The controversy has existed for years and still exists (it is even addressed as an issue in a Tolkien FAQ [which is FREQUENTLY Asked Questions]), no matter whether we are hearing it for the first time or not. Read about the paragraph about the Italian phascist party with links and sources. If you still think this is about 'some people want to see it', then half of Wikipedia should be deleted Pictureuploader 09:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • The article has already gone through unsuccesful cleanup attempts multiple times, without any improvement. My major problems with it are:
    1. Verifyability. Most of the content is unverifyable and contains weasel words.
    2. Unclear scope. Is this about Tolkien being racist, allegedly racist messages in Tolkien's fiction, racists abusing the fiction for ther own purposes, or all of these?
  • The "Views" section of Tolkien article expresses in a few words what this entire article has not managed to do since its creation in March 2005 despite numerous revisions. -- Jordi·✆ 15:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep - the fact that it does have "for and against" sections, and some sections have references, mean that it is salvageable, after the unfounded claims are removed and the tone is changed. (Hmm... and now that you mention it, the fact that Italian fascists are using these claims to promote some sort of agenda does make it sorta notable.) Quack 688 12:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep - interesting, if questionable, subject matter, needs someone to totally overhaul it though. Thedreamdied 15:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I agree with the nominator and Noclip, the entire article simply seems to express someone (or a small group of editors') POV and uses a handful of un-notable essays to back the claim up, but such could be used to back any claim up. More to the point though, it is a discussion which belongs in a blog or on someone's website, not on Wikipedia. Also, most of the few statements with references then 'interpret' those references for the article, hence the statements are original research, not referenced statements. Canderra 15:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
  • What do you mean by POV? There are two large 'for' and 'against' sections. How can both express "some group of evil anti-Tolkien editors'" views? If you people gave it some time to read it, you'd see it's neutral.Pictureuploader 18:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The entire premise of the article appears to be just someone's (or a few peoples') POV, with nothing but a few circumstantial coincidences to back it up (most of which are off-topic anyway). The fact that others have contributed their own opposing POV doesn't make the article neutral, it just makes the article an editor POV "discussion"; a discussion which is fundamentally incompatible with Wikipedia's encyclopaedic form. Canderra 19:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I can reassure you that editors have contributed to both opposing sections. There is no POV. No anti-Tolkienians here, nor Tolkienian apologists Pictureuploader 09:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Either way - the article's existence seems to be irellavent - there are many definative quotes of Tolkien's stance on racism - all of which show that he disagreed with it completely. The only "evidence" is speculation drawn from a book whose author expressly tells people not to take it allegorically. michaelCurtis ^talk+ _{contributions} 12:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, this is absolute rubbish. I would expect this kind of writing at an american liberal-arts college circa 1993 but not in wikipedia in the 21st century. L0b0t 16:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete. Bizarre original research essay, almost entirely unsourced, and the topic itself is fringe speculation and unencyclopedic. Dragomiloff 01:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - Entire scope of article is projecting PC hermeneutics on author's intent and alleged beliefs. People have speculated Tolkien, as well as CS Lewis were writing allegories about Communism v. Capitalism, West v. East, Christianity v. Islam even when they were alive. Unredeemably POV and unencyclopedic. - WeniWidiWiki 02:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup - Yeah, so it reads like a research paper tailored for people who know the work. So it needs to have many more sources cited and less biased language. But this article definitely serves a purpose by addressing a very hotly-debated issue in LOTR scholarship. Wikipedia would be incomplete without this article, if you ask me. This is an issue that deserves a wiki about it, and just because the person who started it wasn't some Wikipedia veteran doesn't mean that it's garbage that should be deleted. "Unredeemably POV and unencyclopedic" is a stretch - the organization is shitty but they have sources to back up a good bit of their claims - that source being the book and Tolkien themselves - and if it's unencyclopedic...well, this is a wiki. I'm guessing that a lot of encyclopedia writers are probably off somewhere writing encyclopedias and not worrying about entries for Wikipedia. This is risk associated with user-edited sites. The author provides several quotes directly from the book (both the text and the introductions) and there are also 2 sources listed, and at least that's a start. I urge someone to clean the article up instead of deleting it, because it needs to be here. It's a very valid criticism of Tolkien's work. There also seems to be a line of debate concerning what some see as people "projecting" racism onto this work, and I believe that someone is just in denial. It's hard to think that something you luuuuv could have such unredeemable qualities, but it's the nature of literary scholarship to leave interpretation to readers. That's how people get as much as they do out of writing. Also, I don't believe that a perceived projection of racism is even a valid argument against this article because history works against that. If it was just an issue of "people want(ing) to see racism in Tolkien's writings" then this debate would have ended decades ago. - Rashaun 18:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

• keep and rewrite. I agree with Rashuan, approximately. This article is about an author important to so many of the WP editors that it is almost central to the WP. The question is real, because linguistic differences and their implied geographic and racial differences were very real to JRT--according to his own account, the work was generated to illustrate the languages. The work by its nature deals with these topics. There are two questions of course, racism as a component of JRT's thought, and racism as shown in LOTR.

So there is a real research question, but this article is no OR.I don't really think of it as a research paper-- it is selection of passages and comments, arranged in no particular order. There is a prevailing POV--the editor is anxious to deny the charge; but the presentation of the evidence is sufficient for the readers to draw their own conclusions.

There is a great deal more to be said, and much citable work has been done on the topics alluded to by this rather primitive list. But a compilation is the first step. Certainly the source in LOTR can be cited for each passage--but why? anyone likely to read this article should be able to find them by heart. I would additionally like to see sections on later interpretations of LOTR--there are some parts of the recent film trilogy where I think racism was accentuated more than necessary.

So keep it--I would love to have the time to do it properly, but I at least will add a few outside citations if it stays. DGG 04:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - the worst that can be said then about JRRT is that he was a "racist" or "racialist" in the sense that he believed there as such a thing as "race"; but as Jensen on the Tolkien FAQ linked to in the article says, his writings look suspiciously racist but upon closer examination, they're benign. Every charge has a counter-example or refutation because these exist. One can believe in "race" and be against apartheid for its racially-based discrimination, as he was. 125.60.243.84 23:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.