Elves, the White Supremacists of Fantasy.

Have you ever considered how (unitentionally i hope) super racist fantasy books are? Somehow regardless of climates, agriculture, food heritage, things that effect human evolutionary diversity: everyone in a fantasy novel is white. Well minus, the inherently evil, senseless and savage races.

Take Lord of The Rings: while I'd pretty sure JRR had every intention of leaving his expectations of worlds and societies behind the introduction page, consider that the epitome of craftsmanship, culture and society exists within a race that has incredibly European features and, to an extent attitudes. I kind of suspect that in fantasy, you can actually read peoples subconscious and unacknowledged perception of their own racial privilege. Like, man, JRR, probably was very egalitarian, but somewhere, in the back of his mind - has a completely ingrained notion of exclusion... Also, don't misinterpret, his books are excellent - it just weirds me out a little.

Or for that matter take any forgotten realms, dragonlance, or dungeons and dragons book (I sadly have read tonnes of them) Almost all of them exist in worlds where there are no people of color (while minus forgotten realms where the darkies worship a spider goddess are completely evil, and are incredibly cunning - but for some reason have the most ridiculous society ever.) or race is a size, and occupational differential. Or some other more contemporary authors, who focus on dialogue, and character interaction, as opposed to the clumsy dynamic of inherently bestial races (kind of like cultists in the Cthulu mythos. Though everyone knows Lovecraft was a bigot... anyways), still end up about a bunch of Europeans, suspended in different levels of magic, spread out over a slightly more or less evolved medieval landscape.

Also, to that same end, it's kind of galling that fantasy is genre mostly targeted at secular audiences, but rarely has a shred of implied evolution in it, and often relies on polytheism to explain a lack of cohesion in worlds.

I don't actually believe there is intentional exclusion in any of these cases (Minus you lovecraft; you dead old bigot, you.) It just makes me consider how weak a narrative has been laid down as the standard. Also, it is still kind of damaging: you write a series of books where the perception of beauty is a bunch of hot Norwegians with big eyes - it kind of makes you look like an asshole - sort of like since you get to create every element of the world your preference is shitty and partisan. Though it's also a bit like accidentally running someone over - the authors don't mean to do damage, but it's still done and in spades.

I just realized I'm actually really annoyed that most fantasy books don't have the sense to incorporate even a little biological precedent - fucking evolution! It simply cannot coexist with some asshole in the sky, farting out magic.

Though to be fair, if you were to take a good look at most media, be it print or visual - them shits do like to re-white themselves some history! I guess it only stands to reason smaller outlets would follow a comparable formula.