It is a peculiar sensation to live in a nation plunged into mourning when you cannot comprehend the feelings of loss. Whilst the news of Queen Elizabeth’s death sparked concern, sadness and even panic in many of my white colleagues at work last week, I looked on mostly bemused. I am not alone in this feeling of detachment; most of my Black family and friends here feel the same. Yes, it is sad when anyone dies. But none of us knew the Queen; she was not a family member, friend or even acquaintance. She was an image, a figment of the nation’s collective imagination that we were told we must adore.
For the children of the British empire, those of us who were born here and those of us who were born in the 15 nations of the “commonwealth,” the Queen is the number one symbol of white supremacy. She may have been seen as an institution but for us, she was the manifestation of the institutional racism that we have to encounter on a daily basis.
African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois best captured this feeling of disconnection when he wrote, “it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others.” Being both Black and American, Du Bois noted, was to be constantly yoked to “this peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness” with conflicting perspectives on life in
— source politico.com | Kehinde Andrews | 09/13/2022