medievalpoc blocked me because i keep reblogging their material to point out how the blog is run by a white woman without any art history qualifications profiting via pateron (to the tune of £670.69 ($1000)/month last i checked) off the misuse of contemporary race categories and their transposition into historical narratives.
medievalpoc, claiming King David wasn’t Jewish but was “black” instead. medievalpoc failing to make distinctions between art periods and calling everything “victorian”. what a fucking bunch of shit. please don’t ever put that asshole anti-semite on my dash.
medievalpoc once photoshopped a man in painting to be darker-skinned, called the man ‘POC’ because it’s a painting of an Italian guy, then, when an Italian woman from Italy called her bullshit because Italians living in Italy are not and have never been ‘POC’, talked over her and accused her of whitewashing herself.
If we’re doing greatest hits here, my vote goes to the time we had to consider the possibility that Urraca of Leon and Castile was Muslim.
They have a history of really being unable to deal with race outside of any box but American critical race theory. Jews are white, Jewish oppression doesn’t matter, etc. This has been ongoing for a long time. Roma activists have talked about the problems with that blog, Jewish activists, you name it. I asked once why they insisted on using BC/AD, which centers the Christian experience of time over everyone else, and was told basically that Jews complain too much and ordinary people wouldn’t understand BCE/CE, so I should shut up. Because apparently, a concept used in high school history books is too sophisticated for a Tumblr blog.
The worst part is, we do need historians to talk about the presence of PoC in European history. But medievalpoc is not that historian, and frequently shuts down any critique or dialogue that is essential to the scholarly process because they’ve got a niche that’s making them money, and if they aren’t right, that puts their income in jeopardy. Because academics are taught that popular history damages our careers, and our careers are already in jeopardy from the aca-business model, few academics do this kind of public history and education. Which leaves gaping holes to be filled like this – and filled very, very badly indeed.
I just generally won’t reblog from them. If something looks interesting, I do my own research, but I won’t reblog their stuff anymore. Too much of it is flat-out wrong and their combativeness on being called on any racist behaviour of their own makes that blog useless, frankly.
The sixth-grade textbook we use at the school I teach at uses BCE/CE.
The idea that you’re going to completely reeducate people (incorrectly) about race and medieval history, and at the same time assume they can’t figure out terminology they may well have already been taught in middle school is insulting beyond belief.
during her panel at wiscon, I had to correct her when she brought up a myth as history.
it was not confidence-inducing.
Oh god ALL OF THIS. medievalpoc is A VERY VERY BAD SOURCE. It drives me NUTS that they get people citing all over the place because they are SO OFTEN FLAT WRONG.
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