Get ready, #medievaltwitter, your time to listen. If you want to understand what it's like to be Black in the field here we go.

#BlackintheIvory being completely erased from the field until you publicly speak out about the racism you've experienced for years.

#BlackintheIvory being told you explicitly do not belong in this field and that you lost out on a job because the dept couldn't justify to students that you are an "Anglo-Saxonist". I am an historian of Early England anyway.

#BlackintheIvory having my publications ignored and bypassed in lieu of white scholars "comments" who haven't even written about the things I have published on (people will take their comments over my publications). Citation erasure and full scholar erasure is always there.

#BlackintheIvory doing the "traditional" work and then told I should be doing 'race' work and then when I do 'race' work I'm told it's invalid b/c you should be doing "traditional" work.

#BlackintheIvory have a scholar say out loud in a board meeting that we need to be inclusive of racists in an org (after I proposed removing at least one sexual/racist predator). Not one other board member will say this took place (although I took the minutes and have a record).

#BlackintheIvory see colleagues using the hashtag Black Lives Matter or blackout squares on social media who have ignored me or other black/brown scholars. They are comfortable with fair-skinned ones though.

#BlackintheIvory be doxxed, threatened by professors and students who want to destroy any chance you have in the field because you speak out about racism. I witness the majority of the field be silent.

#BlackintheIvory had started doing digital humanist work that was considered "groundbreaking" and then the dept you started this quietly hired a white woman (keeping the job post secret) in lieu of you to continue the work you started.

#BlackintheIvory have your face, body and name ridiculed publicly for speaking out about racial injustice in the academy and having white people send me DMs to say sorry instead of speaking up.

#BlackintheIvory being accused of using "blackface" by racist scholars who then use 19th-century race science to analyze your body, heritage and name.

#BlackintheIvory finally started breaking out in hives, have asthma now and need to see a doctor to get tested for an autoimmune something or other cause this racism in the field is literally killing me.

#BlackintheIvory called a bully, witch-hunter, c***, bitch, liar, and more by academics (let alone the public) because I call for equity in my field.

#BlackintheIvory being gaslit as a student by particular profs who made it clear that this field was not mine. Grades suffered but any attempts to seek reviews or justice were stopped by colleagues or bureaucracy.

#BlackintheIvory being mistaken as the waitstaff at several conferences even though I was wearing a dress, nametag had a computer bag each time.

#BlackintheIvory being told I have MORE opportunities in a predominantly all-white field because I am a woman of color.

#BlackintheIvory being gaslit and told that we *do* have diversity in the field. Look at all the [white] women in it.

#BlackintheIvory being called racial slurs as "jokes" and colleagues did not mean it. From N-word to P-word depending on how they read me.

#BlackintheIvory watching my Black colleagues leave the field (or die early) and not wanting Black students to have to deal with this, but want them so badly to succeed.

#BlackintheIvory I was quiet for a long time. I played by the rules of "proper academia" and I was still erased. When I began to speak up I was vilified and tone policed. Not calm enough, not polite enough, etc. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

#BlackintheIvory having your work sabotaged and/or stolen by stealth racists who masquerade as progressives. Let me just tell you they are all white women.

Definitely feeling this in the Humanities too. And on top of that you get those racist blowhards who then accuse and mock you for not having 20 pages of publications . . . although you actually DO have more than most of those assholes who criticize you. https://twitter.com/itscrystalgrant/status/1269778038956470272?s=20