It’s astounding how much people get their panties in a bunch over skin colour. From English language comment sections to Norwegian language comment sections, it’s a fecking constant. It’s the same as with people getting worked up by, say, gay representation, as if it’s forced upon them. And then they cloak it all behind being Tolkien purists, as if the skin colour was a crucial aspect of a real historical account.
White heterosexuals = normal. Black homosexual? Blatant agenda! These people have no clue what it feels like to almost never have your existence acknowledged, except as some sort of weird and different presence that needs explaining. Shows how much work remains in normalizing things.
To be fair though, I never fully realized just how much of a point this was until a friend of mine from Africa told me he tries to make sure he mainly watches shows where he feels represented, because he started to realize the toll it took on him. Really hard for a member of the status quo default groups to get.