Willing Suspension of my Black Ass: Where the Fuck Are All the Black People in The Lord of the Rings?

Now, imagine this: Morgan Freeman playing the role of Gandolf...

So, if you're watching The Lord of the Rings and not thinking where the fuck are all the black people, then there's something wrong with your imagination.

And your soul.

My soul, however, is fully intact: When I was 19, I wrote the following in a journal I'd been keeping everyday since I was 15:

"Sometimes I wish everyone was alike - everyone. Somehow I believe things would be more different, possible better. If everyone looked basically the same, acted and spoke and walked the same (and especially thought the same), views of right and wrong would be as simple as...as black or white.

"But because we are all cursed with a nagging individuality, finding answers to complex problems is almost impossible. If we were all the same, generalizations would be acceptable and, thus, people’s feelings wouldn’t get hurt. Answers would be clear. Different strokes for different folks wouldn’t matter. Everybody would see things with a blinding clarity. And those looking for what was right and what was wrong would know exactly where to go. “Soul Searching,” the disease that it is, would be cured" (date: 94980. 5918; p.142-143).

I haven't changed much since I was 19 other than I no longer create forced pauses in sentences with the use of ellipses (a ridiculous grammatical punctuation) in an attempt to set up epiphany with a drum roll. But the young man in the above lines informs the man now, and there are days (this is not one of them) that I do still dream we were all alike and looked "basically" the same.

Ironically, this is the same argument ridiculous white Americans (racists?) use to justify why there aren't any black people in The Lord of the Rings: what does it matter, they say, we are all the same. Well, most of you mofos don't act like it, so that's the first fuckin' problem; and, secondly, if I'm expected - as were so many others over so many years - to make the imaginative leap of intertwining my brown, human heart with that of Froto-fuckin'-Baggins' hobbit heart and his struggle with the ring (which is to say nothing of how I contorted my imagination over Luke Skywalker's ass), then I expect to see - at the very least! - a couple two-three black hobbits mixing it up at the Shire.

Some also argue that the The Lord of the Rings wouldn't be historically accurate if there was a black person in the cast, that the stories center around European, not African, folklore. Unless I'd been paying more attention to how to fry chicken or effectively wear my jeans sagging beneath the curve of my ass as a boy during "All the Living Things on Planet Earth" class - can someone explain the historical accuracy of a fucking Elf? Or a Hobbit. Or a Dwarf. Or whatever the fuck Gollum is? These creatures are not white people. They can't be. Because, well - they're creatures! That's why they call them creatures.

Perhaps a better inquiry than the title of this blog would be why I don't have a hard time suspending my disbelief when it concerns white actors brilliantly portraying the roles of an androgynous, emotionally unstable Elf, a Dwarf who overcompensates for deep height and sexual insecurities by wielding an ax, or the ring-addicted, anorexic gnome who suffers from a multiple personality disorder that sends him bouncing back and forth, like a crack-head tennis ball, between slave of the Ring and master of the Ring. "No, no," Peter Jackson might have said on casting day, "We must honor Tolkien and use white actors for these critical roles!"

Okay, that was low down. I take it back. I dig white people (specific ones) a lot.

What I really mean to say is this: If you put a black person in a hobbit outfit, give him/her some fake, hairy feet, a couple of pointed ears and an English accent, who the fuck among us couldn't make the imaginative leap to think Hobbit? My fear – and one reason why there aren't any black people in The Lord of the Rings movies – is that too many of us would say, "Wow, there goes a black hobbit." I only have an issue with the comment if it doesn't inevitably lead (sooner rather than later) to the next comment: "Ah, fuck it. A Hobbit is a Hobbit is a Hobbit." My fear is that the white imagination hasn't evolved enough to the point where they can see themselves - and allow their children to see themselves - within the lives of people who don't look like them.

If it has evolved, then dammit, I wanna see a couple two-three white people get just as pissed off as I am, grab hold of the nearest white motherfucker you can, and demand an answer to a very simple question: if we're all the same, where the fuck are all the black people in The Lord of the Rings?

Because if y'all niggas don't start asking questions and demanding answers - well, we're just not gonna be your friends anymore...

We ain't gonna play with y'all no more and we damn sure ain't inviting y'all over to our houses. And when, and when the aliens finally come to Earth, we gonna tell them all about you and how you be treatin' us, and then we gonna leave you here all alone and go back with them to their world! And when you be still over here all lonely and missin' us and stuff and wishin' you had our hands to hold, we gonna be on that other planet makin' fun of you! And you gonna hear our laughter like an echoing roar rolling through the universe and straight stabbing you in the heart. And even if you find a way to find us and y'all be cryin' about how sorry y'all is and stuff, it still won't matter. Cause we won't even talk to you when you pass us on the street or sit across from us at a cafe. And if we do speak, it'll only be to say, "Psst, you had your chance and you messed it up. So there!"

So keep it up, white people - y'all niggas know which ones I'm talking about - and see what'll happen if you don't put us in your movies. We won't let you be the same as us no more, and then where will you be?!