Let the Descendants of Britain’s Empire Have Their Glee
SlateAs the United Kingdom plunged into sorrow—both on the ground and online—upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the diaspora of the British Empire’s current and former colonies reacted, well, a bit differently. — scaachi September 8, 2022 Black Twitter is on fire today 😂 pic.twitter.com/zsK6aK3ldn — Port Misery, Sasha Gilmore’s Private Security Team September 8, 2022 You likely noticed this stark disparity in some regard if you’re an internet user with connections to netizens who have origins in formerly colonized nations—places like Ireland, India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, Barbados, Zambia, and far too many others to list. They doubled down on their lack of grief and highlighted not only the bloody history of British rule, but the queen’s own role in perpetuating it—whether through history-obscuring initiatives, direct orders for violent military crackdowns on colonial dissent in Yemen, and her other efforts at halting the mass independence movements that took place, and succeeded, under her reign. As the Kenyan cartoonist Patrick Gathara stated in June, referring to Elizabeth: “To this day, she has never publicly admitted, let alone apologized, for the oppression, torture, dehumanization and dispossession visited upon people in the colony of Kenya before and after she acceded to the throne.” If Britons are feeling some sense of dislocation now regarding the queen, what do they think their former colonial subjects have felt all their lives?