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And by "true," what I think Graeber meant was this: fantasy writers, whether they know it or not, blur the mess about race that early anthropologists caused, and contemporary ones are still trying to rectify.
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On Roundworld, we now know that race is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological construct:
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This doesn't stop folks who don't know any better from assuming, based on apperances, that race 𝘪𝘴 biological, judging that all the things known about genetics absorbed by "common sense" is a good enough heuristic.
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The minute you decide that humans live with, e.g., silicon-based lifeforms, the biological basis for racism is reified - a basis that, again, geneticists and anthropologists have refuted through the scientific method.
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Since we can't fit Roundworld's anthropological constructs to a world of fantasy, writers usually co-opt the word 'speciesism' as a fine distinction from what we would understand as racism, and to help bring us into the secondary world the story presents to us.
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But when you get right down to it, to find out what it's really all about, that trolls and dwarfs sling slurs at each other is an example of racism.
We can say this much: politically and socially speaking, Ankh-Morpork has got its shit together.
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Humans, trolls, dwarfs, vampires, werewolves, golems, zombies, Igors, the odd talking dog - all are welcomed to be bribed, robbed and murdered within its walls. Ankh-Morpork's got the room for commentary like this passage in Snuff (2011) (👇):
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> ..."And so one at a time we all become human - human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls… the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress."
Heavy stuff: you're equals in Ankh-Morpork ON THE CONDITION that you act human.
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So surely there's also plenty of room for bad, old-fashioned human-on-human racism.
Pratchett thought so, too. Jingo (1997) is a sharp rebuttal to, "Racism is not a problem on the Discworld."
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Take the characterisation of 71-Hour Ahmed, bodyguard to the Klatchian Prince Khufarah. From Sam Vimes' perspective, Ahmed acts every bit the stereotype, compared to the honourable, educated Prince. The eye dialect and clunky Morporkian comes out in full force (👇):
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> “If hyou changing your mind, offendi, I give hyou twenty-five camels, no problem,” he said, pulling a clove from his teeth. “May your hloins be full of fruit.”
