I’ll skip ALL the other supporting evidence for dark skinned dwarves and Skip straight to the part where Tolkien speaks on the subject.
The dwarves are children of Aulë the smith, Aluë is said to look just like a big dwarf.
He is described by Tolkien as having dark braided hair and a beard, and reddish brown skin.
So- recap. The guy that made them, who is said to look just like them, is described as dark haired and with reddish brown skin according to the creator of the story.
So look- that doesn’t mean all dwarves are “black” or whatever else- it also doesn’t mean that all the dark dwarves turned pale from being underground because that’s just dumb on several levels. What it means is that in the story the entire world was sung in to existence by Gandalf and his buddies and the dwarves were created by a giant reddish brown god spirit who had to put them to sleep for some ridiculous amount of time because elves were supposed to be the first people of middle earth. FYI Aragorn is described as dark and Samwise is described in several places as brown somewhat ambiguously. But like- come on. There are fucking ghosts man. An entire city of ghosts and a guy who put his soul in some jewelry and what you want to bitch about it that it is unrealistic that the anatomically infeasible magical tiny people with super strength who have kids at 90 years old could have.. dark complexion…? Read a book.
The dwarves are children of Aulë the smith, Aluë is said to look just like a big dwarf.
He is described by Tolkien as having dark braided hair and a beard, and reddish brown skin.
So- recap. The guy that made them, who is said to look just like them, is described as dark haired and with reddish brown skin according to the creator of the story.