The point made is a perfectly sensible one if you include a bit more context:
> Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society.
> "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century."
> In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century."
> Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."
Afaict, a good part of racism comes from the fact that human brain automatically labels people different from you as enemy. I assume this was a very useful strategy for millenia, if you saw a person not belonging to your tribe/nation that probably meant armed conflict a decent chunk of the time.
This applies to any kind of difference: clothing, culture, neurodivergence etc. I live in a country with zero racism against black people (all the racism is reserved for immigrants which only differ by culture, not color) yet you can tell black people are still a bit left-out in many social settings.
Due to black population being very low, people rarely ever see a black person here. When they see one, for the brain it's an unknown/unfamiliar, and that means potential danger at the subconscious / first impression level. To put it simply, people get weirded out. Ofc, once you get to know them that goes away.
(This is not to condone conscious racism: goyim, plantation workers and all.)
From what I've been told by friends working within several Universities, the only people that avoid "anglo saxon" are fanatics of another kind. Its all very childish.
> Amid all the battles and conquest, however, Æthelstan brought a cosmopolitan flair to his new kingdom. Today there is a tendency – particularly among the far right – to depict early England as being cut off from the rest of Europe, and homogeneous in its cultural makeup. In truth, the newly formed kingdom of England was an outward-looking society.
> "There's been a big debate about the very use of the word Anglo-Saxon, so much so that people in our field of scholarship are not using the word anymore, and are going towards Early Medieval instead because of the connotations that Anglo-Saxon now has with the far right," says Woodman. "When [the term Anglo-Saxon] is invoked by the far right, they're thinking of it as very one-dimensional – people from one background in England in the 10th Century."
> In fact, that's a big misconception of what the period was like. "It was actually a very diverse place in early 10th Century. I always think about Æthelstan's Royal Assemblies, and there were people there from lots of different kingdoms within England, Britain more widely, from Europe. They were speaking a multiplicity of languages, Old Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, Latin. I just feel [the term Anglo-Saxon] is used without thinking, and without factual detail about the early 10th Century."
> Downham agrees. "There was a lot of cultural variety in the area we call England today. There wasn't this English monolith that started in 500AD."