in London, where the coffin carrying Queen Elizabeth II has just been placed in a hearse bound for Windsor Castle following the state funeral at Westminster Abbey. More than 500 foreign dignitaries attended the queen’s funeral, including President Biden, leaders from Commonwealth nations, many members of other royal families, including the emperor and empress of Japan. The funeral was the largest police operation in U.K. history. Police reported placing sharpshooters on the roofs of every building within a mile of Westminster Abbey.
In it, he writes, “My paternal grandmother was born in colonial Jamaica in 1914 and was raised on the fairy tales of the Mother Country and nobility of British royalty. She migrated to Britain in search of better opportunities in the mid 50s as part of the so called Windrush generation, who helped to rebuild the nation after the Second World War. A picture of the Queen had pride of place in her front room and were she alive today, she would have wholeheartedly joined in the collective grief. But my father grew up in the 1960s, facing the cold realities of British racism and could never feel any warmth to either the nation or its figure head.”
So, yeah, no, I mean, I think you’ve captured a lot of that with the Politico piece. And what is happening today is this collective grief of the country. And as a Black British person, it brings to mind W. E. B. Du Bois’s idea of double consciousness, when he said that being Black and being American, sometimes they just clash so much that you feel alienated from the society. And seeing all this collective grief and this mourning and people queuing 24 hours with little kids so they can stare at what was likely an empty box
— source democracynow.org | Sep 19, 2022