I have to think this is deliberate, done on purpose to spite Tolkien's memory and fans

It is. We've already seen from WoT that their gay idea of "representation" is fake too. They don't care about having diverse minorities in contextually logical situations. What they want is to completely destroy White European literature. What they want is to push a globohomo world view where every scene is either mixed or majority BIPOC to normalize the idea that we'll all live in the same rainbow cities - food courts of culture where every day just walking down the street is an adventure and you never know who will rip you off or try to stab you that day. Everyone must become rootless, interchangeable cogs to easily be manipulated by the elites. This isn't a vast conspiracy by the producers, they are themselves cogs who have been turned into vectors of the mind virus of woke that controls all institutions.