FFS, BBC. Get a grip.

It turns out that structural racism and sexism were major influences on the death toll of the Black Plague in London, according to an article in the BBC.

No, I am not kidding. A study based on the exhumation of 145 bodies in just two cemeteries has revealed that the prejudices of anthropologists in the 21st century are completely correct.

Who would have guessed? Not me, I assure you.

BBC cites study that uses the bubonic plague that killed more than half of London as an example of systemic racism. Yes, really.https://t.co/Yhdk3uNhnmhttps://t.co/Yhdk3uNhnm

— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) November 21, 2023

Back in the 1340s, London had a population of about 80,000 people, about half of whom died in the plague. Of those how many were black women? I have no idea, but I think we can assume the number was rather tiny. Now add in this factor: how likely is it that the Black women of London were evenly dispersed? Probably 0% likelihood. Therefore their presence in any particular cemetery, no less more than one indicates an unusual population density of that demographic in an area, not that they were dying in disproportionate numbers across London.

Not that it takes a genius to figure this out. The bubonic plague is not racist, and nobody was steering it in any particular direction.

As there's no science/data whatsoever in the article, it seems fair to ask:
* How many black women lived in Medieval London?
* How many died of the plague v the proportion of white women?
* What about co-morbidities? A genetic factor? A lack of immunity due to country of origin?…

— Martin Daubney 🇬🇧 (@MartinDaubney) November 21, 2023

The rationale that structural racism led to disproportionate deaths among Black women is pretty thin: poorer people were more likely to die than the wealthy–which is possibly true–because the wealthy were more able to flee the city before getting infected.

The problem with that argument is simple: almost nobody was wealthy in London, and people dropped like flies even before the plague. And there were so few Black people in Britain at the time that identifying anything “structural” applying to them is ridiculous on its face.

Social and religious divisions based on origin, skin colour and appearance were present in both medieval England and Europe.

Biological anthropologist from University of Colorado, Prof Sharon DeWitte, said: “Not only does this research add to our knowledge about the biosocial factors that affected risks of mortality during medieval plague epidemics, it also shows that there is a deep history of social marginalization shaping health and vulnerability to disease in human populations.”

Associate professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, Dr Joseph Hefner, said: “This research takes the deep dive into previous thinking about population diversity in medieval England based on primary sources.

Yeah, right, whatever.

The fact is that in feudal times social stratification was the name of the game, and the lines were pretty strictly drawn and race had nothing to do with it. In fact, almost everybody in Britain was functionally a slave–few people weren’t tied to a particular place and required to provide labor to the Lord of the manor. Cities were by far the most free, any people living there had far more rights and social mobility than anybody else.

In other words, if Black women were living in London they were likely freer than most Britons. Not necessarily wealthier or living better lives, although quite possibly so, but certainly freer.

Ironically, the plague did have one salutary effect: by making labor scarce and increasing access to land the people at the bottom of the social ladder who survived became both wealthier and freer than before. It is an odd quirk of history that the feudal system broke down and capitalism began to flourish due to the plague.

But that is neither here nor there when it comes to this ridiculous argument. Structural racism is an entirely modern concept, and exporting it back to medieval times is a joke. I have no idea why there were any Black people in London at the time (leftovers from the Roman occupation? Trade?), but their numbers would be infinitesimal and there would be few to no significant social structures designed to oppress them because what would be the point? There were bigger fish to fry.

But here we are. Academics come up with such idiotic theories based on minuscule amounts of evidence, and prestige new organizations spread this intellectual manure to fertilize the imaginations of people looking for racism wherever they can invent it.

We really need fewer academics, and to go back to the model of the media being a working-class trade. Life would be more sane.