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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Or in the recent lord of the rings show, in the hobbit community they are all white except for two people who are not married to each other, and one of those characters had a kid with a white hobbit, and their kid is white.

On that one, it seems that the black woman is the step-mother so at least they were aware of that much. There are a couple other black Harfoots as well, but yeah - all the stuff about "finally black Hobbits!" and the two main Hobbit characters are both white girls. "We have black Elves!" You have one black Elf, and no sign of where he comes from or why he's the One Black Elf in amongst mostly white Elves. Ditto with Dísa - I think there were a couple of other black Dwarves, but they were in crowd scenes so don't really count. So these really stick out as Token Diverse Inclusive Characters.

alright fair point. i didn't get past the first episode.

IIRC though it was the dad that was black. I don't know if it was a main character that I'm referring to. It was just in the first episode when they introduced the hobbits.

But that's sort of my point. In some cases we are supposed to suspend this disbelief and in others we are not, and there is no particular indicator to determine when this belief is supposed to be suspended. Like we're supposed to know that the black mom is the stepmother but not know why there's one black elf in a community of white elves?