Here, Dr. Conan Doyle, a white male medievalist, claims @ISASaxonists is the Real Racist bc she's supposedly racist against the Irish (??). He then releases information on where she lives & refuses to take it down even when she says that she has stalkers. #MedievalTwitter https://twitter.com/ISASaxonists/status/1287884938193313797

In fact, when Dr. MRO states that she has violent stalkers & doesn't want him posting her location, Dr. Doyle's response is to laugh and tell her to "grow up".

For the record, I just went through her public writing, and there's no mention of where she lives.

Dr. Doyle also quotes Audre Lorde at her to explain that she -- a Black woman -- is doing anti-racism wrong bc she used an "ethnic slur": called a white person whose username is "Paddy[something]" "Paddywack".

This person had been demanding proof from Dr. MRO and other medievalists for days that there was racism in medieval studies. He'd also been arguing about the term "Anglo-Saxon" , mansplaining racism in the UK, etc. But Dr. Doyle only had a problem with Dr. MRO's response.

NOW. That Audre Lorde quote is, ofc, from the essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House," and it is about white feminist orgs not recognizing that--even though white women experience oppression--it is nothing like that experienced by WOC, especially BIWOC.

The essay is about the erasure of Black women from white feminist conferences and from white academia in general. For a white man to use it to suggest that a Black woman is only "claiming" to fight racism and that she's actually reproducing racism is.....something.

You *really* have to take the quote out of context to make it about a black woman being anti-Irish, since the quote in context is all about WOC.

Moreover, a "master's house" is a reference to the WHITE ENSLAVEMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE, something that white Irish people did indeed participate in.

To claim that a Black woman is using the "master's tools" when she criticizes a white Irish person is...wrong. In many ways.

Especially since the VERY NEXT SENTENCE after the part Dr. Doyle quotes is "this fact is only threatening to those who define the master's house as their only source of support." That is *not* Black women. It's white women who don't want to abandon the master's tools.

Then, ofc, the white man states that the Black woman is violating intersectionality & is "part of the problem" by criticizing a white Irish man. But, as @sandylocks argued when COINING intersectional theory, its purpose is to center the marginalization of Black women. Full stop.

Here's Prof. Crenshaw's article introducing intersectionality as a framework for making sense of -- & centering -- the experiences of oppression of Black women. Dr. Doyle is using *Black feminist theory* to criticize Dr. MRO after she called him out for posting her location.

(It's worth noting, as a sidebar, that @ISASaxonists has repeatedly argued that anti-Irish prejudice exists and has long existed) https://twitter.com/ISASaxonists/status/1287600217555193857

But, when she stated that anti-Irish prejudice isn't racial and that white Irish people aren't a race, all hell broke loose.

But, *cough*, she's correct. Racism is not the same as prejudice. It's prejudice PLUS a social system designed to disenfranchise one group.

White Irish people have long participated in whiteness and white privilege. Yet, there are stereotypes about them and the history of Ireland is a history of English violence and colonialism. But they are not PoC.

Prejudice is the not the same as racism.

Let's take an example! In the 50s, my (Scandinavian) grandfather refused to let my (Irish/French) grandmother give their kids Irish names. Was he prejudiced against the Irish? Sure, maybe! Was he being RACIST? No. Society was not organized legally against Irish ppl.

Guess what else WAS happening in 1950s America? THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. Legal segregation, laws barring Black people from voting, LYNCHING, etc. *That* was racism.

Know what else was happening at the same time? Black people who spoke about racism were being shut down by white people invoking "racism" against the Irish. James Baldwin talks about this (screenshot from The Fire Next Time, 1962).

I'm sure there will be responses in my mentions talking about lots of examples of anti-Irish prejudice or the Irish not always being considered white, etc. I'm familiar. Historical examples are not the same as *present* systematic prejudice.

Moreover, as @ProfKFH pointed out in 1995, anti-Irish prejudice has long built on a foundational anti-Blackness and focus on African difference. (quote from her fabulous *Things of Blackness*). Anti-Black racism is so fundamental that it's the basis of much prejudice.

There's been a flurry of claims that @ISASaxonists is being essentialist by stating that white Irish ppl aren't a race and that prejudice against them isn't the same as racism against BIPOC. To suggest that she's arguing that races exist is disingenuous at best.

Race is socially constructed. That doesn't mean that anything is racism. The discussion of race as socially constructed emerged largely from early Black sociologists like W. E. B. Du Bois and from Black academics doing Critical Race Theory.

To use social constructionism to argue that a Black woman is essentialist when she says anti-Black racism is different than anti-Irish prejudice.....

To criticize her using Black feminism...

To laugh when she says that posting her location opens her up to violence...

The thing those of us who are white need to worry about is not Black women using "the Master's tools" (an offensive idea), but white ppl using Black anti-racist theory to silence Black women. We need to be better than this, #MedievalTwitter