When everything on screen just looks like the modern US, you lose any of that complexity. It takes you out of the story immediately and you’re reminded that it’s a 2022 TV show on Amazon getting marketed to as broad an audience as possible instead of a fictional world with its own history and cultures.
It may take you out of the story immediately, but please do not speak for everyone.
First of all, while Tolkien wrote this as a kind of mythology for England, he didn’t like allegory and so we don’t need to find real-world parallels to justify casting non-white people in this show. And we certainly shouldn’t use black people to represent those that primarily stood with evil in some odd attempt at nuance.
Skin color does not play an important role in the story, but the racial structure and frictions are laid out pretty clearly (Elves, men, dwarves…etc). Tolkien’s writings obviously don’t paint these tensions as a positive but simply a reality, and he champions the moments when these peoples come together.
I find it endlessly disheartening that in a fantasy world that posits the themes of fellowship and faith that a modern audience cannot be trusted to embrace inclusivity in its appearance.
And those that are nauseatingly railing against “wokeness” seem to have no issue with the actor other than that they are black. That’s not good enough. You seem distracted by a perceived agenda behind casting a non-white person, when really you should ask yourself “why not cast a non-white person?”
And if Tolkien truly would roll over in his grave over diverse casting, as some have claimed, then perhaps he is not worth the reverence he is given. Based on his writing, however, I do not believe that to be the case.