BBC: The Real Victims of The Black Death in England Were... Black Women?

History as an area of academic inquiry seems like it would be a cut-and-dried one; you look at the available data for the time period, determine what happened when and to whom and call it a day. In many ways History should be viewed as a sort of extreme ex post facto journalism, sifting through to find and report the truth as best as it can be determined.

Of course this view on history and the role of the historian in reporting it can be a bit of a problem when you've got a social agenda to be pushing, so sometimes you'll find 'historians' who just try to wedge whatever agenda item it is they're looking to push in to their research, no matter how absurd the end product is. See this excellent example from the UK's BBC:

Black women most likely to die in medieval London plague https://t.co/aoqM6nhtfU
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) November 21, 2023

Now it's not easy to peg exactly how many people of sub-Saharan African descent lived in England during the years that the Plague was sweeping through Europe (England experienced the Bubonic Plague beginning in 1348 A.D.) but that's largely because... there weren't many people of sub-Saharan African descent. This isn't to say that there weren't any but they weren't a common thing at the time, as the BBC itself acknowledges in a different article, noting for instance that 'In the cosmopolitan parish of St Botolph without Aldgate (London) Africans were 5% of the total population.' So it's not huge numbers we're talking about here, and if it seems like these numbers are probably kinda made up it's because they most likely are.

And lest we forget, as the Community Note here mentions, this study didn't even bother to use DNA to try to figure out if the bodies under research actually were black; instead they chose to use something that sounds awfully similar to phrenology make that determination.

This study is unreliable and the headline inaccurate and alarmist.

The 675 year old remains of 49 people who died of the Black Death were analysed and 9 were found to be “probably” black.

The Black Death killed over half of London. Making it a racism issue is nonsensical. (1/2) https://t.co/yf6JUtyiHY
— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) November 21, 2023

Biased BBC already informed us Ancient Greeks and Romans were black, that Africans have been in the British Isles for 7,000 years and were the first Brits.

Now say the plague in 14th century Europe was racist and the Black Death disproportionately affected black British women. https://t.co/M2lomGLzSi
— Wanjiru Njoya (@WanjiruNjoya) November 21, 2023

I did my own research and found out that they called it ‘The Black Death’. How could we miss something so obvious all these years? Racism. That’s how. https://t.co/aNegmsYikG
— Jarvis Dupont (@JarvisDupont) November 21, 2023

It was right there in front of us the whole time but we never listened!

"It's unfair that black women weren't provided an opportunity to die like everyone else in medieval London by not being there."

- BBC News (UK)
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) November 21, 2023

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

More than half the population of London died, but let's make it all about a subset of (at the time) a teeny, tiny fraction of that population. 🙄
— Jack Montgomery (@JackBMontgomery) November 21, 2023

Yes, when your sole focus is on race then you're going to make whatever research you're doing say something about race no matter what. Maslow's hammer strikes again!

Much ink has been spilt about the loss in institutional credibility in the recent past, but this is a good reminder of why that credibility has been lost, both by the world of academic researchers who put out this insanity and by the media who uncritically publish their work. As long as they keep this up don't be expecting that credibility to be rebuilding anytime soon.

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