I guess I still don't fully understand. I hope you know I am not trying to criticize your opinion or anything, but I think that racial/religious prejudice and politics are pretty universal themes that find their ways into most fantasy worlds and most epic myths. I guess what I am trying to say is that I never found that fantasy *WAS* escapism, so much as giving everyday life a twist - changing the dreary realities into something new, yes, but not being able to escape the framework of the real world because that's where all of us (even highly imaginative fantasy writers) live.

Take LOTR, the first thing most people think of when they think of fantasy - the dwarves and the elves just don't get along, the hobbits distrust the big people and some of the hobbits make bids for power over each other. Bilbo's relations are materialistic, so are the dwarves. Many people have made productive parallels between various real world events and the story itself and even though Tolkien himself discouraged a too simplistic comparison in that vein, I am sure he couldn't have argued that real world events didn't influence him at all.

I hope you don't mind that I keep sort of arguing with you, like I said, I really don't want to offend. :)