Harry & Meghan in History
Bunmi fatoye-matory
For most of my life, I’m proud to say, I successfully avoided caring about the British royal family, but Harry and Meghan have ruined all that. Now I see their experience, their story, our exhaustion with their story, all of it, as an opportunity to usefully blur the line between past and present; to discover uncomfortable connections between various historical dots, and to redraw those connections in new, healthier ways. I know that’s a lot to say about people many of us are tired of hearing about, and who often seem so self-absorbed. And yet I’m still a bit surprised at how much I’ve been drawn in.
Let me start at the beginning for me. In the late summer of 1997, I was in mourning, and I was in debt. I was heading into my junior year at Harvard. The mourning began earlier that summer when I learned that two of my classmates—young, brilliant Black men—were killed in the same car accident. The loss of any young life is a tragedy. The loss of these young lives was devastating for me, the class of 1999, and particularly our small Black community. The debt began two years earlier when my mother and I both took out loans to pay for this higher educational experience. (In truth, the debt began centuries earlier, with the theft of land and people that, down the line, required loans taken out by both parent and child to further that child’s education, but that’s an essay for another time).
Picture a young Baratunde—part nerd with his Palm Pilot, part cool kid with his cornrows, part janitor with his mop bucket (paying down that debt required many odd jobs including literally cleaning and prepping campus housing as part of the “Dorm Crew” work-study program). I’m walking through the courtyard of Mather House, a rare Brutalist dorm sitting along the Charles River amongst more traditional Gothic Revival architecture striving to stir some Oxbridge flavor. It was here that one of my closest friends, a Trinidadian woman, broke the news that Princess Diana had died.
She was clearly devastated. I was definitely not. Of course, as I had recently experienced, the loss of young life is always a tragedy, but this one wasn’t personal for me. When I asked my friend why she cared so much, she explained that it had to do with being born in a Commonwealth nation and her admiration for Diana’s global public service and possibly some other points I’ve since forgotten. And while her explanation made sense, and I watched some of the news coverage, it would be another 20 years, almost to the date, before I spent any meaningful time thinking about British royals.
Fast forward to the late summer of 2017, when my wife and I took her father on a three week tour of England by rail, bus, and foot. It was an atypical vacation for Americans according to every British person we encountered. We visited the Lake District in the north of the country and the far western reaches of Cornwall. The centerpiece of our journey was a stop at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial, where American World War II service members are honored, and my father-in-law’s father is recorded on the Walls of the Missing—his plane went down over the North Sea in 1945, and he was never found. While I had emotionally resonant experiences like that, and enjoyed beautiful countryside hikes and too many dollops of clotted cream, the underlying theme of the trip would be my face-to-face experience with the persistent imperial mindset among the British.
First, there was the absurdly tattooed, recently-released-from-prison, unabashed Nazi on the train. (If you want the long version, read my recollection at the time.) Then there was the Georgian housing tour during which the guide spoke of the wonderful changes sugar brought to England but said nothing of the horrific conditions forced upon unpaid laborers in the Americas who harvested the crop. There was the guy who aggressively stole my place in line, even though I was the only person at the counter, late one night at a curry shop in Penzance. And almost everywhere there was a nonchalant explanation of how this or that uncle murdered this or that young nephew to prevent them from ascending the throne. “And here under this staircase is where Lord so-and-so stuffed the bodies of young so-forth-and-so-on. The coffee shop is on the left…” This was the summer I learned that Game of Thrones is a documentary about the British Empire.
Meghan’s Mirror
After that trip, I started watching The Crown on Netflix as a way to help me process my experience with these feisty people from this little island. I was disappointed to discover that I was getting invested! Claire Foy’s portrayal of a young, initially reluctant Queen Elizabeth helped. It filled in some gaps, not always with facts, in a way that explained how this royal family transitioned from God-approved ruling authority to publicly-subsidized mascot of a tiny island nation that has had a disproportionate influence on the globe in the centuries since the Magna Carta was drafted. I dug deeper and started watching documentaries about Princess Diana. Then I heard about When Harry Met Meghan, a podcast devoted to the upcoming royal wedding, and I definitely listened to more than one episode.
On the big day, my wife and I were vacationing in Tulum. We were so determined to witness this other interracial couple tie the knot on a global stage that we got up around 6 a.m. to watch the creation of a Black princess live. It was exciting! Seeing all that whiteness seemingly accept Meghan’s Blackness in the form of her, her mother, and that unforgettable gospel choir felt good. Meghan, it seemed, was a hit! A mixed race, Black child of the long-ago British Empire had come to King’s Landing to extend the monarchy’s relevance.
As we all know now, the story was too good to be true. The British tabloids tore her apart, reprising their treatment of Diana but with the addition of racism. The royal family failed to defend her. Harry and Meghan complained, fought back, and eventually fled to California. During this time, there were countless magazine pieces and interviews with people like Oprah, and my impression was that these two just wouldn’t shut up about their family drama. I was particularly disenchanted with Meghan, who seemed genuinely shocked that British people, the same people who colonized, brutalized, and enslaved so many peoples of the global majority, could be racist. So I hesitated before pressing play on the Sussexes’ Netflix series. I expected to hate it. But I was wrong.
It turns out, I had mistaken hearing about them with hearing from them. Their documentary-slash-propaganda series finally gave me something that came directly from the source. Meghan’s naivete was at last explained by the fact that she hadn’t grown up with a particularly Black experience due to her skin tone and isolation from any concentrated Black community. In a way, marrying into the British royal family was the Blackest thing she’d ever done. It put her in a world where the racial contrast was heightened, and as a result, she was perceived as foreign, inferior, and Other. She was a Black woman who didn’t have to identify as Black until she threw herself into one of the whitest institutions on the planet. For my book, How To Be Black, I often started interviews with some twist on the question: “When did you first realize you were Black?” If I wrote that book today and interviewed Meghan, she might say it’s when she married Harry.
Sometimes the way we cope with a partner’s negative experience is by refusing to see it, either consciously or unconsciously, or by trying to minimize it. This is not the path Harry has chosen. Meghan’s man showed up and stood up for her. He saw the best of his mother in Meghan—and the worst of his country in how it treated both women. I admire his willingness to confront the ugliest parts of his family, his nation, and himself, and to take steps to interrupt some painful historical patterns, whether that has to do with racism, sexism, colonialism, media exploitation, or his own trauma over his mother’s death. So, I’ve started reading his memoir, Spare, and I can’t put it down. It captivated me from the very first line with a quote from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”
Colonial Kindred
In short, Harry’s reckoning has moved me. But I don’t think he would have embarked on this journey were it not for Meghan, and their story reminds me of another I’ve been tuning into lately.
Kindred, the FX television series, tells the story of a modern-day Black American woman suddenly dragged into a much more racist and abusive past—a Maryland slave plantation in the year 1815. (Mild spoiler alert in the next few sentences but not enough to ruin the experience of watching). At first, she time-travels alone. Then she accidentally drags a white man back with her. He can barely stomach the horror. The next time, though, he chooses to accompany her of his own free will. He recognizes he can help her, but also that the journey might help with his own healing. This elegantly disorienting show was originally written as a novel by the incomparable and prescient science-fiction author Octavia Butler. Black women have birthed or nursed so much of our world into being, and Octavia Butler has done this time and again with her work (her Parable series is exceptional).
The parallels between Kindred and Meghan & Harry are striking to me. Meghan was essentially dragged back in time when she joined this outdated institution upheld by dubious claims to divine rights based on a centuries-old, arbitrary bloodline. The British royal family is funded both historically and presently (if indirectly) by exploitation of the material and human riches of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. When she joined that family, Meghan lost her identity and much of her freedom, and was shocked and horrified to experience a racist and sexist rejection of her humanity (see: anything Piers Morgan has said about her). And while Harry was initially dragged along for the ride, he eventually started to see the world through Meghan’s eyes. What he saw horrified him, and because he is unfailingly committed to her, he too was treated as foreign and Other. Together, they’ve attempted to craft a new, combined story to make sense of their past while sidestepping the most grievous historical tragedies and mistakes.
It’s possible that my emotional investment in royal family intrigue will soon come to an end—I don’t need to experience all the Sussexes’ future media projects if they remain focused on promoting their version of events in the family drama. But I doubt very much that they will need to do much more than they already have in this area. I’m grateful to them both for realizing that the past is also their present, and for choosing not to stay stuck, instead using that knowledge as an impetus to finally break free from toxic historical patterns.
Cornelius Hamelberg
A long time ago, there was Mark Steyn weighing in on Harry and Meghan
Meghan the radical. Black ass. Really funny: ” In a way, marrying into the British royal family was the Blackest thing she’d ever done.”
Fast forward :
We are at the moment - but in whose privileged, downtrodden or heroic history of international or interracial relations? ? True, “We're Having A Moment” so - is there a doctor in the house, just in case? You know that this ain’t no time for comedy. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
Indeed, we’re at that indelible and unforgettable moment with Meghan & Harry, - as in “Ladies & Gentlemen”, even if correctly speaking it's supposed to be “Harry & Meghan”.. Harry, like his namesake and erstwhile predecessor Prince Hal had been sowing his Royal Oats and spreading joy for a while before he decided to stop fooling around and to start settling down. It’s the usual boy meets girl story and after a while, Harry decides he wants to marry - get married, only thing is that Meghan is not your typical girl and Harry is not a typical boy either and in some ways, there are echoes and overtones from the movie, “Coming to America”, except that Harry himself is serious, it’s not a time for comedy and over there at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace there's no Prince Harry around to say like Kunta Kinte or John Amos, “ I don't give a damn who you are. This is America Jack, now, you say one more word about Lisa, and I'll break my foot off in your royal ass.”
As the pompous Buckingham Professor of His Imperial Majesty’s Commonwealth English would have put it, i.e. the buck who has never had the privilege of sipping tea or, enjoying Scottish Marmalade or some homemade scones from the Royal Kitchen would have put it, indeed “we were” ( when what he actually means is that he was, he was at the “ delicious “ moment, like actually having breakfast at Tiffany's and “Seeing all that whiteness seemingly accept Meghan’s Blackness in the form of her, her mother, and that unforgettable gospel choir felt good. Meghan, it seemed, was a hit! A mixed race, Black child of the long-ago British Empire had come to King’s Landing to extend the monarchy’s relevance.” - seeing it all live and direct on TV, with all the due pomp and ceremony :
The Royal Wedding 2018: Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle
Well, one of these days we should be expecting a book review by Baba Kadiri, the only man on this planet that I know who purchased a copy as soon as it was available over here in Stockholm, Sweden. Last night I put it to him, “Baba Kadiri, how come someone as radical as you could be reading someone’s Royal Autobiography? I didn’t realise that you were such a royalist !”
Well, far from being repentant, he didn't start off with some apologetic preamble such as, “ I’m still a bit surprised at how much I’ve been drawn in.”Surprised by himself.
Well, Ifar from being anything like “ radical”, I am myself an unabashed Royalist. - I like Charles III and that’s why it was such a shock to hear Baba Kadiri say, “ I don’t think that there’s going to be a Coronation!”
What?
Why not?
Baba Besserwisser Kadiri, happily: “Because it was x number of years ago ( I was in such a state of shock that I don’t remember exactly how many hundred years he said) that the Church of England last conducted tying the knot in a Holy Matrimony Ceremony for divorcees!”
To be or not to be, well, ain’t that a shocker! I thought that that was the whole point of the Church of England coming into existence with King Henry VIII, the one who had so many wives ( but not as many as the Wisest King Solomon), severing ties with the Vatican !!!!
Ladies and Gente men ye can bet all the £Sterling that’s lodged in the Bank of England that it’s gonna be: The Coronation of Charles III and Camilla
Now before rushing to any prefabricated judgements, we could learn a lot from what the Rabbi says here: Here's What Nobody Told You About David & Bathsheba
Another wakeup call: SCARY SIGNS OF DAJJAL’S ARRIVAL FOR 2023
Cornelius Hamelberg
My apologies for the many typographical errors. I have corrected most of them and am here reposting for less painful reading:
Once this is off my chest, I’ll return to comment on many specific statements made by B.T . in this piece that I’m responding to.
Recommended reading material for the principal actors that we’re discussing in this thread:
William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner by William Hague, former Foreign Secretary of the UK: Not surprisingly, James Cleverly is the UK's current Foreign Minister
Re -” Meghan’s man showed up and stood up for her.” ( Baratunde )
I like that. That's the song that the Black Baptist Choir sang at their wedding:
“Stand By Me !” ( 10 600 000 hits in 0,44 seconds)
The United States that Harry & Meghan chose a land of refuge. I daresay, if Brother Obama’s Michelle had been white - like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or like Lady Bird Johnson of the John Birch Society, he would not have been elected “ First Black Potus of the US” and on this people’s planet, that’s a reality that Barack Obama, Baratunde, Cornel West, Louis Farrakhan and Ta-Nehisi Coates would be the first to admit as an inescapable American reality most readily. As the bard sang, in “I Shall Be Free No.10”
“Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want everybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.”
In Africa, we talk about the post-colonial and the neo-colonial, and we mostly talk positively of China - in the United States, they are still talking about the Civil War and the one looming on the horizon, talking about the post-plantation era, the 40 acres and a mule, Civil Rights, what happened in Mississippi and Alabama, and there’s the lingering perception, stronger among the Southern aristocracy in the United States, Harry & Meghan’s place of refuge, stronger there than it is with the British Aristocracy - that perhaps it was only recently, almost within living memory that one of Meghan’s maternal ancestors hailed from the plantation
The antecedents for the so-called mixed marriages in the upper echelons of society are many - too numerous to mention, for example, we have what was probably a political marriage, that of Kwame Nkrumah and his Egyptian spouse, and their children. When it comes to the royal castes, there’s the exemplary case of King Hussein of Jordan and Princess Grace of Monaco…
After all that Baratunde T has said about the British Monarchy, I’m left wondering, what are the basis of other monarchies in general and African monarchies in particular, such as the Egyptian dynasties, through the deposed Solomonic line in Ethiopia, through the Royal House in Uganda, the Kingdom of what was formerly called Swaziland, down to the monarchy in KwaZulu Natal
Let’s imagine if instead of Meghan Markle, Prince Harry had met Mona (an Egyptian Princess) or Sonya (a Jewish Princess - but not in that rabid American sense ) or one of the many eligible beautiful princesses from Saudi Arabia and he had lovingly converted to al-Islam in order to Harry-Marry one of them, done the Nikah at Mecca, or, closer to home, had married a Yoruba Princess instead, and in this post-Apartheid era, comparatively speaking, to cut the shit and take the bullshit by the horns if Prince Harry had really wanted to make a strong statement on interracial love/ sex/ mixed-race royal babies etc, best case scenario to get to the nitty-gritty of the race palaver, Harry had sought, found and fallen head over heels in love with a genuine, unmixed and un-mixed up super coal-black is beautiful Zulu Princess from Mangosuthu Buthelezi and His Majesty Misuzulu Sinqobile kaZwelithini’s Kingdom of Kwazulu Natal - then another set of dynamics would have been at play and we would have been dealing with a largely different reality, reading quite a different story , and Prince Harry would have probabaly written another kind of autobiography and continued living either in Merry England or feeling welcome and at home in voluntray exile in the Kingdom of Kwazulu Natal…
We must, first of all, commend Bunmi Fatoye-matory for posting Baratunde Thurston’s reasonable, credible, fairly middle-of-the-road, but by no means pedestrian, African-American perspective on Prince Harry & The Duchess of Sussex, the place in history which he accords their imbroglio, certainly more than just a blip, a little tittle-tattle with the Royal family, of which they are both members, even if for the moment - (a blip of a moment?) the relations are a little strained, with one faithful section of course hearth and home-based@ Buckingham Palace, separated by the Atlantic Ocean - like that once awful middle passage, the other miscreants over there in the US - a former colony and which from the US- African-American point of view is fortuitously not a monarchy.
Another difference that could be pointed out is that whereas the US due to climate etc had plantations on which Africans that had been kidnapped from Africa and enslaved, worked as slaves, - due to the geography of bad weather, the kidnapped Africans also provided slave labour - without wages, and by the time of the complete abolition of slavery within the British Isles and across the then British Empire on which the sun never set, the brethren and sistren over there in Britain were referred to as “The Poor Black” many of whom were repatriated to Freetown Sierra Leone, paradoxically, some of whom - former butlers, valets, coachmen, etc together with returnees from Nova Scotia, returnees from the Caribbean and Jamaica in particular, a good number of returnees from slavery in the United States to freedom in Freetown, Sierra Leone and along with the many captives from Congo, past Calabar, from Igboland and Yorubaland on ships on their way to Brazil and Cuba were liberated by the British Navy patrols along the West Coast of Africa and these human cargoes were liberated - dumped in Freetown Sierra Leone - then the great melting pot and there they all contributed to forming the various strata of the society that later on became Creoledom, in that country…
Secondly, I must thank Ojogbon Falola for bringing me back to this thread - returning me to this thread, like a returnee, and this he has done successfully by appearing to me in a dream this morning - and that’s what I thought when I woke up, that Ojogbon Falola is becoming very powerful O - just imagine he now has the power to enter my dream world over which I myself have no control - to enter my dream world supernaturally and to give me directions there. In this case, I was stirring the pot and there he was as some kind of commander-in-chief in the kitchen ( I was disappointed that it was not on the battlefield), telling me how much salt not to add - maybe in Freudian or Jungian terms - in these days of so much talk about autobiographies thereby permeating our consciousness with that kind of awareness it could be that it was his autobiography, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt that had rudely intruded - without my permission had entered my subconscious and had exploded into that early morning dream delivering sound advice by the cooking pot. Even more miraculous was my understanding and interpretation of the dream to mean - “ Baba Kadiri didn’t say that there was not going to be any coronation because the CCs, Charles and Camilla are both divorcees, what he said was that according to sound British praxis, the decent thing would have been for Charles to abdicate as per the precedent set by the Abdication of Edward VIII - which in my judgement is more applicable to Harry & his American divorcee actress Meghan, than to dear Charles and Camilla…
There’s someone like poor me, born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a Commonwealth nation, the first British colony in all Africa, - a crown colony, and for the longest period of time, one hundred and fifty years. When it comes to waxing sentimental and shedding real tears about the departure of dearest Queen Elizabeth II, well, I’m biassed, I arrived in London in the spring of 1952 and of course was also there for Her Majesty’s Coronation in 1953, and since then I have sung “ God Save the Queen “ gustily, all my life, but then again I’ve never even heard of “When Harry Met Meghan”, which I suppose parallels the romantic, all white Hollywood comedy When Harry Met Sally. I can’t help imagining that using her Black Magic, that dangerous woman Meghan must have given Harry some of that old Black Magic/ Voodoo ROYAL TREATMENT, that special sunshine magic which would have got him singing and purring contentedly like a baby, after which I’m sure that body, mind, heart and soul, Prince Harry must have been totally converted, forever. At this moment, why am I thinking of The Arabian Nights, and Paul Simon’s Duncan, instead of Laylatul Qadr or the Royal Wedding Night? Ah, if only there was real freedom of speech! Real freedom of speech? Go and write your own fictionalised something…
At some time or other, Mehgan in her various circumstances, her earlier marriage to her first White Man Trevor Engelson, could she have possibly thought of herself in Frank Yerby terms, passing off as white and later on as per title so-called “mixed race” royalty?
For clarity's sake, someone must draw a distinction between the African-American perspective represented by the historic Meghan the main actress herself, and Baratunde Thurston ( sounds like an amalgamation of Baraka + Tunde, the Bara, replacing the usual Baba - as in Babatunde - Baba has returned - reincarnated ) and that’s how it is with these powerful, funky African- American names affirming identities, identifying origins and affiliations: Amiri Baraka, Kwame Ture, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, Queen Latifah, and for funkiness you can’t beat Omowale - otherwise known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and from our Malcolm to some people's Meghan, “
/ to be continued
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2023 5:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Harry & Meghan in History
EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.
Once this is off my chest, I’ll return to comment on many specific statements made by B.T . in this piece that I’m responding to.
Recommended reading material for the principal actors that we’re discussing in this thread:
William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner by William Hague, former Foreign Secretary of the UK: Not surprisingly, James Cleverly is the UK's current Foreign Minister
Re -” Meghan’s man showed up and stood up for her.” ( Baratunde )
I like that. That's the song that the Black Baptist Choir sang at their wedding:
“Stand By Me !” ( 10 600 000 jits in 0,44 seconds)
The United States Harry & Meghan chose a land of refuge. I daresay, if Brother Obama’s Michelle had been white - like Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs or like Lady Bird Johnson of the John Birch Society, he would not have been elected “ First Black Potus of the US” and on this people’s planet, that’s a reality that Barack Obama, Baratunde, Cornel West, Louis Farrakhan and Ta-Nehisi Coates would be the first to most readily admit.; as an inescapable American reality. As the bard sang, in “I Shall Be Free No.10”
“Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want everybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.”
In Africa, we talk about the post-colonial and the neo-colonial, and we mostly talk positively of China, - in the United States, they are still talking about the Civil War and the one looming on the horizon, talking about the post-plantation era, the 40 acres and a mule, Civil Rights, what happened in Mississippi and Alabama, and there’s the lingering perception, stronger among the Southern aristocracy in the United States, Harry & Meghan’s place of refuge, than the British Aristocracy, - that perhaps not so recently, almost within living memory, one of Meghan’s maternal ancestors hailed from the plantation
The antecedents for the so-called mixed marriages in the upper echelons of society are many - too numerous to mention, for example, we have what was probably a political marriage, that of Kwame Nkrumah and his Egyptian spouse, and their children.. When it comes to the royal castes, there’s the exemplary case of King Hussein of Jordan and Princess Grace of Monaco…
After all that Baratunde T has said about the British Monarchy, I’m left wondering, what are the basis of other monarchies in general and African monarchies in particular, , such as the Egyptian dynasties, through the deposed Solomonic line in Ethiopia, through the Royal House in Uganda, the KIngdom of what was formerly called Swaziland , down to KwaZulu Natal
Let’s imagine if instead of Meghan Markle , Prince Harry had met Mona (an Egyptian Princess) or Sonya (a Jewish Princess - but not in that rabid American sense ) or one of the many eligible beautiful princesses from Saudi Arabia and he had lovingly converted to al-Islam in order to Harry-Marry one of them, done the Nikah at Mecca, or, closer to home, had married a Yoruba Princess instead, in this post-Apartheid era, comparatively speaking, to cut the shit and take the bullshit by the horns - if Prince Harry had really wanted to make a strong statement on interracial love/ sex/ mixed-race royal babies etc, best case scenario to get to the nitty-gritty of the race palaver, and Harry hadsought and found and fallen head over heels in love with a genuine, unmixed and un-mixed up , super coal-black is beautiful Zulu Princess from Mangosuthu Buthelezi and His Majesty Misuzulu Sinqobile kaZwelithini of Kwazulu Natal - another set of dynamics would have been at play m we wouyld have been dealing with a largely different reality, redaing quite a different story , and Prince Charles would have probabaly written another kind of autobiography , living either in Merry England or feeling welcome and at home in voluntray exile in the Kingdom of Kwazulu Natal
We must, first of all, commend Bunmi Fatoye-matory for posting Baratunde Thurston’s reasonable, credible, fairly middle-of-the-road, but by no means pedestrian, African-American perspective on Prince Harry & The Duchess of Sussex, the place in history which he accords their imbroglio, certainly more than just a blip, a little tittle-tattle with the Royal family, of which they are both members, even if for the moment - (a blip of a moment?) the relations are a little strained, with one faithful section of course hearth and home-base@ Buckingham Palace, separated by the Atlantic Ocean - like that once awful middle passage, the other miscreants over there in the US - a former colony and which from the US- African-American point of view is fortuitously not a monarchy.
Another difference that could be pointed out is that whereas the US due to climate etc had plantations on which Africans that had been kidnapped from Africa and enslaved, worked as slaves, - due to the geography of bad weather, the kidnapped Africans who also provided slave labour - without wages, and by the time of the complete abolition of slavery within the British Isles and across the then British Empire on which the sun never set, the brethren and sistren over there in Britain were referred to as “ The Poor Black”, many of whom were repatriated to Freetown Sierra Leone. paradoxically, some of whom - former butlers, valets, coachmen etc together with returnees from Nova Scotia, returnees from the Caribbean and Jamaica in particular, a good number of returnees from slavery in the United States to freedom in Freetown, Sierra Leone and along with the many captives from Congo, past Calabar, from Igboland and Yorubaland on ships on their way to Brazil and Cuba were liberated by the British Navy patrols along the West Coast of Africa and these human cargoes were liberated - dumped in Freetown Sierra Leone - then the great melting pot and there they all contributed to forming the various strata of the society that later on became Creoledom, in that country…
Secondly, I must thank Ojogbon Falola for bringing me back to this thread - returning me to this thread, like a returnee, and this he has done successfully by appearing to me in a dream this morning - and that’s what I thought when I woke up, that Ojogbon Falola is becoming very powerful O - just imagine he now has the power to enter my dream world over which I myself have no control - to enter my dream world supernaturally and to give me directions there. In this case, I was stirring the pot and there he was as some kind of commander-in-chief in the kitchen ( I was disappointed that it was in the battlefield) , telling me how much salt not to add - maybe in Freudian or Jungian terms - in these days of so much talk about autobiographies thereby åperemeating our consciousness with that kind of awareness it could be that it was his autobiography, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt that had rudely intruded - without my permission had entered my subconscious and had exploded into that early morning dream delivery sound advice by the cooking pot. Even more miraculous was my understanding and interpretation of the dream to mean - “ Baba Kadiri didn’t say that there was not going to be any coronation because the CCs , Charles and Camilla are both divorcees, what he said was that according to sound British praxis, the decent thing would have been for Cjarölles to abdicate as per the precedent set by the Abdication of Edward VIII - which in my judgement is more applicable to Harry & his American divorcee actress Meghan, than to dear Charles and Camilla…
There’s someone like poor me, born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a Commonwealth nation, the first British colony - a crown colony in all Africa, and for the longest period of time, one hundred and fifty years. When it comes to waxing sentimental and shedding tears about the departure of dearest Queen Elizabeth II, well, I’m biassed, I arrived in London in the spring of 1952 and of course was also there for Her Majesty’s Coronation in 1953, and since then I have sung “ God Save the Queen “ gustily, all my life…but then again I’ve never even heard of “When Harry Met Meghan”, which I suppose parallels the romantic, all white Hollywood comedy , When Harry Met Sally.. I can’t help imagining that using her Black Magic, that dangerous woman Meghan must have given Harry some of that old Black Magic ROYAL TREATMENT, that special sunshine magic which would have got him singing and purring like a baby, after which I’m sure that body, mind, heart and soul Prince Harry must have been totally converted. At this moment, why am I thinking of The Arabian Nights, and Paul Simon’s Duncan, instead of Laylatul Qadr or the Royal Wedding Night? Ah, if only there was real freedom of speech! Real freedom of speech? GO and write your own fictionalised “something…
At some time or other, Mehgan in her various circumstances, her earlier marriage to her first White Man Trevor Engelson, could she have possibly thought of herself in Frank Yerby terms, passing off as white and later on as per title so-called “ mixed race” royalty?
For clarity's sake, someone must draw a distinction between the African-American perspective represented by the historic Meghan the main actress herself, and Baratunde Thurston ( sounds like an amalgamation of Baraka + Tunde, the Bara, replacing the usual Baba - as in Babatunde - Baba has returned - reincarnated ) and that’s how it is with these powerful, funky African- American names affirming identities, identifying origins and affiliations: Amiri Baraka, Kwame Ture, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, Queen Latifah, and for funkiness you can’t beat Omowale - otherwise known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and from our Malcolm to some people's Meghan, “
/ to be cointinued
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Grace Edema
Dear Sir/Ma,Kindly find below the link to join online.However, we look forward to receiving you physically, especially if you're within the region.We appreciate everyone who submitted tributes in memory of Prof. Ayo Olukotun. May his soul rest in peace.May God keep us all.Amen.Grace Edema.Prof. Ayo Olukotun Wake keep @4pmThursday 26th January 2023Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:Please click this URL to start or join. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89949274002?pwd=NzgzWmVTL0hpY0VaR0tQZ1I0ZzdYQT09Or, go to https://us06web.zoom.us/join and enter meeting ID: 899 4927 4002 and password: 495697
Cornelius Hamelberg
Once upon a time, it was John Kerry that said,
“I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side”
Who was it that said,
“America is worse than Britain, Britain is worse than America …Each one is worse than the other” ?
And who was it that said,
“And almost everywhere there was a nonchalant explanation of how this or that uncle murdered this or that young nephew to prevent them from ascending the throne. “And here under this staircase is where Lord so-and-so stuffed the bodies of young so-forth-and-so-on.”?
To Harry’s credit, thus far he has not allowed his Duchess of Sussex to persuade him that they should both join in the Southern Baptist Choir’s rendition of “ WE Shall Overcome! “, Harry & Meghan leading the protest marches through the streets of London, all the way to outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.
As you know, shit happens!
Consider: With Prince Harry, fifth in line of succession to the British throne, Americans would say just a heartbeat away, all it would take is a minor mishap or two ( the usual cloak and dagger skullduggery) and voila - fait accompli, we have King Harry the something and his Meghan Sparkle the First African-American beauty Queen of Britain!
What would the tabloid press not be saying then?
Before I underline the most questionable bits in Harry & Meghan in History, I’d like to ask Baratunde Thurston the same question that I’d like to ask Harry & Meghan, jointly, and separately:
Which country is more "racist", the United States or the United Kingdom?
True: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”