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":
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."
