Academic medievalists claim to be concerned with the misuse of medieval history to revive 19th century "racist tropes", but the main proposition they seem intent on quashing is the idea that Britain and Ireland's population was >99% phenotypically European until c. 1965.

It's very funny that medievalists are telling themselves that they're bravely fighting a revival of 19th-century "race science" when they're actually just the rear guard for British community stakeholders who really wish it was true that Britain always looked like a Netflix show

Like it is very silly to suggest that the proposition "The population Britain and Ireland was historically 99% phenotypically white" is a revival of some specific form of Victorian "race science" rather than being an obvious and continued truth on the ground until circa 1965

There were liberal and cultural relativist critics of different forms of 19th century race chauvinism, but I really doubt that any of those critics ever even considered the notion that 13th-century London might have been 13% African or 14% South Asian