DATS RIIIITE

Alright fuckers, since none of you could be bothered to actually read the article, here's some key points and takeaways;

-The data was based on grave sites throughout London, of those buried between 1348-1350. They determined who was and wasn't of African heritage via bone analysis. My understanding is that that's a little bit iffy in terms of accuracy, but given they're anthropologists and I'm not I'll take their word for it

-Their sample size was 145 individuals, from 3 cemeteries (or about 0.004% of the estimated dead)

-The sample included both sexes, but this article has chosen to focus on the female data because it is abnormally high

-In terms of how high it was, they determined that while non-plague burials typically contained around 8% black women, plague burials contained around 20% black women.

Right so what does this actually tell us?

-If you were a black woman when the plague hit, you were straight up way more likely to die. Look, I don't care that it goes against your notion of what this study is or isn't, that's what the data fucking tells us, OK? It's not radical to point out that a group that made up ~8% of the overall population accounted for 20% of gravesites is a little disproportionate. And yeah, this can be linked to premodern structural racism, be that in terms of housing density, access to medical care, the type of jobs they had to work with the risks involved, etc.

Why does this matter though?

-It's cool to learn things about the past, fuck you

-More practically, it helps us inform disease policy in the modern day. We know that disproportionate casualties occurred during the pandemic- working out exactly under what conditions that disproportionate effect occurred and how we might potentially mitigate them could actually save lives. This article on its own won't do it, but it's part of a very large body of work that collectively improves our disease-fighting capability.

Tl;dr: Anon gets pissy that black women get a mention despite it being genuinely useful data, and also just really interesting to learn about, because anon gets nauseous every time he images a historical figure that isn't a white man.