Pondering why some folks are giving Great Britain's brutal colonial past a pass?

The Friday Flashpoints!

A few years ago, I sat in a jam packed Tallahassee IMAX theater alongside family and friends dressed in their finest African themed clothing who were there to watch Black Panther on opening weekend.

Shot of me sporting a Kente cloth Ascot at the Jack and Jill of America “Black Panther” premiere in Tallahassee circa 2018.

When the fictional Princess Shuri called the American CIA agent a "colonizer," the laughter that erupted around me was deafening! When Dr. Erik Killmonger schooled the British museum curator on stolen artifacts from the fictional African Kingdom of Wakanda, there were visible head nods and audible "that's right" like I was sitting in a Black church all throughout the theater.

Dr. Erik Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan, gives the “child please” look to the British museum curator who refuses to acknowledge the true history behind stolen artifacts.

Indeed, the historian in me who knew fully well about European exploitation of Africa, and the sci-fi geek in me who has always loved those moments when "art imitated life," was most pleased with how Black Panther entertained while telling some actual truths about the nature of colonialism.

That same historian in me now recognizes that "QEII—Regina," more popularly known as Queen Elizabeth II who died yesterday at the age of 96, was the longest living monarch in British history. The significance of that is that during my youth, I learned all about her Great Grandmother, Queen Victoria, and how no one believed that her 63 year reign would ever be matched. Well, Elizabeth didn't just match Victoria's record, she exceeded it by seven years.

Queen Victoria

But the historian in me also knows all too well that Queen Victoria was deemed the living embodiment of the phrase that "the sun never sets on the British Empire," a fact that was no term of endearment to those people (and their descendants) living in Africa, the Americas, Australia, the Caribbean and Atlantic Isles; India, the Pacific Rim, and upper Asia. Rather, it was evidence that for over five centuries, those people were ruled by Britain's military might and oppressive yoke—not because the Union Jack 🇬🇧 was asked to be flown over their homelands!

The historian in me also knows fully well that long before QEII was crowned in 1952, that Great Britain had become a constitutional monarchy, one in which the elected prime minister and Parliament eventually became primarily responsible for the day-to-day workings of Great Britain's domestic and political affairs following the Reform Act of 1832. But to suggest that her father, King George VI, his predecessor brother, King Edward VIII, or Elizabeth herself had no advisory role in British politics is wholly incorrect. In addition to being consulted on matters great and small, the British Crown throughout the Victorian and second Elizabethan ages remained the face of the Empire through two World Wars and smaller wars around the globe, natural disasters, domestic terror attacks, and everything in-between. 

Yesterday, I read a number of social media comments from admirers who felt that Queen Elizabeth was a strong female leader during a century rife with patriarchal sexism; I certainly understood this perspective. Others opined that they held major concerns about British colonialism and racism, including allegations that Elizabeth was concerned that her Great Grandchild, Archie, may inherit the darker hues from his mother, Meghan Markle's, Black American mother, but that they still enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of British nobility as the same was akin to watching a reality drama, much like HBO's fictional Game of Thrones.

I certainly understood that perspective, too…

But what made reading such comments fascinating was the juxtaposition of those arguing that QE II was a mere figurehead with no power, and others who noted the advisory power that the Crown still wields. From my viewpoint, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and it will be years before seven decades’ worth of events that she experienced are fully analyzed by historians far more interested in the pedantic details of British history than I am. 

But circling back to the top of today's Blog, as to the historically oppressive rule of the British Crown, I know enough to know that there's a reason why Twitter was lit 🔥 yesterday with vitriol from QEII's former subjects—including many from Ireland (or Irish descent) who shed no tears by her passing. 

Which is why I found it rather interesting to see some Blacks arguing, "y’all do know that the British were the first to abolish slavery," when I'm sitting there like, "yeah, but over 200 years after they mastered it as an art form in their so-called "New World." 

I mean, if you are for the telling of historical truths and dismantling of systemic white supremacy and racial oppression, how do you wrap yourself in the 🇬🇧 flag and shed real tears when a monarch who actively supported British military and political efforts to put down independence movements in Africa, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere in the 1950's and 60's, dies? 

British soldiers holding captured Mau Mau rebels in detention camps circa 1952—the first year of QEII's reign.

If you claim that you are for the telling of historical truths and the dismantling of systemic white supremacy and racial oppression, how do you wrap yourself in the 🇬🇧 flag and shed real tears for a monarch whose inherited wealth was derived from the sugar, molasses, cotton, tobacco, and diamonds that some of your very own ancestors were bonded, branded, berated, beaten, and beheaded to harvest for the British Crown's profit?

If your folks were harvesting the tobacco, sugar, and cotton—and not sitting at the table smoking a pipe and sipping a mint julep—you are descended from those oppressed by the British Crown in the American colonies.

If you know that America's so-called “Founding Fathers” like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and their ilk were slave masters who beat, berated, raped (Jefferson) and killed enslaved Blacks that they soon deemed "3/5th of a whole white person" for Census purposes, but don't realize that those men spent the bulk of their lives as BRITISH citizens with a culture and mores shared with their colonizer British cousins, how can you criticize those Founding Fathers, but celebrate their equally oppressive kinsmen across the pond?

If you have ever read anything about Cecil Rhodes and how his diamond mines in Southern Africa exploited Black miners who were forced to work totally naked (to allegedly prevent ‘theft’) while making him as rich as Croesus—and deriving wealth for the British Crown that it still enjoys to this day—but you shrug your shoulders and say, "whatever, I'm still gonna mourn and miss my Queen," I ask how do you absolve the modern monarchy for still enjoying the trappings of colonial exploitated wealth?

Last, if you despise the old Confederacy and supported the removal of statues to the Robert E. Lee's, Stonewall Jackson's, and Nathan Bedford Forrest's (all British Empire descendants) that were erected in the 20th Century to defy the push for Black Civil Rights, but don't despise a British government that murdered far more non-whites through the centuries, including a gross number of Blacks and Browns during QEII's reign as “Her Majesty's” British government sought to suppress natives in Kenya, Cyprus, Yemen-Aden, and Ireland—all in the name of Queen Elizabeth II—then I don’t know what I (or anyone else) can do to convince you that oppressors all form a symbiont circle—even if some do so with social graces and a smile for celebrity people of color.

While my own passion for history has compelled me to learn all about European colonialism and the famous figures, battles, and movements that are fascinating reads if for no other reason than to understand the roots of white supremacy from political and religious constructs, knowing that history simply does not allow for me to mourn those from the distant or recent past who directly benefited from the racial and socio-political oppression of my ancestors.

Upon reflection, while the humanist in me recognizes that the Windsor family and current British subjects are mourning the loss of their relative and titular leader, the realist in me remains quite sober and aware of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Britain's longest serving monarch—and those who ruled before her!

The British Royal Family during Harry and Meghan's 2018 wedding

Here's hoping that as the world continues to slowly change that perhaps, just maybe, that QEII's future descendants, particularly the heir apparent, King Charles's son William, and his own progeny will do their parts to reconcile and ameliorate their nation's horrific colonial past? I may not be alive to see it, but perhaps my own descendants, whose veins will be filled with the blood of enslaved human beings in the former British Colonies of Georgia and the Bahamas, will…