Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, died on Thursday at age 96, BBC News reported. While King Charles III leads the country in mourning, Black Twitter is confronting the British royal family’s legacy of slavery and colonialism.
Upon hearing the news, a flood of memes, celebratory messages, and historical references filled timelines on Twitter. A number of Black Twitter users also marked the queen’s passing to set records straight by putting legacies into full context.
“Black Twitter is on fire today,” read one viral tweet, which displayed an image of a man posing seemingly triumphantly beside a grave that had been marked as the queen’s.
“Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was an active participant in colonialism. She actively tried to stop independence movements & she tried to keep newly independent colonies from leaving the commonwealth. The evil she did was enough”
Jamaica, a constitutional monarchy with The Queen as Sovereign, had begun the process of removing the queen as head of state, as BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported. The nation had been working to transition to republic status.
The Atlantic contributing writer Jemele Hill
took to Twitter to provide some context behind the monarch who reigned for a record-breaking 70 years and the era of her time. She shared a link to an op-ed for The New York Times to back her up.“This is what I mean by considering the full history of the Queen,” said Hill in a tweet. “It’s ok to pose questions and think about the fullness of legacies.”“The matriarch of a royal family legacy of slave-trading, imperialism, colonialism, theft, symbol of opulence and mascot for the ruling class is dead/the media will now parade the queen’s zombie ass in front of u while telling u that overthrowing capitalism is not what we need,” Boots Riley chimed in.