Black Struggle And Queen Elizabeth: Can We Separate The Two? | The Culture

now we've been having a number of conversations as we talked about queen elizabeth ii who passed away last week at the age of 96 and kind of kind of going through her complicated legacy going through the history of the monarch has forced us to ask some very uncomfortable questions and most importantly has forced uh the world to look at the british monarchy as whether it's still necessary whether it's racist whether it's a truly something that should be revered and respected and so we've been having these discussions because it's a part of the culture and so we wanted to continue this discussion today as i mentioned earlier today uh the queen's body has officially uh is officially in england will lie in state from wednesday to friday her funeral will be monday and this is a 10 day funeral national morning for the united kingdom uh for their queen but we wanted to bring in historian and scholar brother michael in hilltop to talk to us a little bit about the queen's relationship to africa and to black people and how black history or how history will see the queen uh we also want to be joined by our culture crew members lisa winnie annie mon heath brother michael thank you again brother for joining us always good to have you dear brother how are you this afternoon oh i'm all right for roger how you doing brother thank you i'm staying black brother michael yes let's talk a little bit about this queen queen elizabeth ii people have been um looking down that her life is over people are asking the question you know we're seeing all types of debates about how history is going to view the queen especially in her relationship to uh to black people black africans uh to african nations to black people in this goodness part of the world what would you say what is the the right view or the proper way for us to look at this complicated legacy of queen elizabeth ii well i i think it's uh one that cannot be separated from uh colonialism and the oppression of uh african people um in the ca on the continent of africa in the caribbean um you also have uh india as well india was a colony of um of great britain also so there have been a number of articles uh that have been written dealing with this uh one of them is a good one from uh cnn cloud of colonialism hangs over queen elizabeth ii uh dealing with her relationship uh over queen elizabeth's legacy in africa and it deals with kenya we know that uh kenya was a colony of uh great britain and you're going to have the malmo rebellion of 1952-1956 that starts basically um soon after she uh becomes queen in 1952 after her father king george vi uh dies and you the the um you're going to have a 150 000 uh kenyans put into internment camps concentration camps uh estimates are that it was a total of about 1.5 million who are going to be confined uh to uh their homes and have to have movement passes things like this but they inflicted uh torture on them brutality castration on uh african men in kenya uh during the mama rebellion raping of african women uh so so her a lot of people so i've read a number of different articles dealing with this okay and when we look at it from the perspective of white people in england the majority of them see her as the monarch of 70 years someone who was constant someone who was a rock uh uh regardless of wars going on and things like this the monarch was was always a foundation always a constant okay right other people who were came from countries that were colonized by great britain uh a lot of them don't see it that way a lot of them see her as part of that whole machinery that whole british empire that colonized a hundred years ago colonized one-fifth of the world population and then when uh she became queen in 1952 uh about a little more than 25 of the world population was under british rule it was a little more than 700 million people i read that i read that yeah but now that's at a time when the population of the world was about 2.5 billion 700 million people were under british rule uh if um so i have i have uh a couple of uh graphics here that i think would help and i did this on my show the african history network show i want to put this i guess i put in the chat for you to see this yeah if your team could bring this up okay this is a map of the world but i just posted it here i just posted the link if they could bring this up on the screen this is a map of the world but it shows the nations that declared their independence from great britain and there's one thing is one thing to read it and and and we're going to focus on the african nations okay so um great britain gets a lot of these african nations from the berlin conference of 1884-1885 when these 14 european nations carve up they meet in berlin uh germany they carve up africa into colonies and uh great britain is going to be one of the uh one of the countries that gets the most great britain and portugal things like this okay but great britain gets a lot if we can we zoom in uh can you zoom in on that yeah we're gonna see if we can do there we go yeah yeah it should be able to should be brother michael's taking us from school right now so so if we if we look at this map here all right this is uh this is a list of the countries that have gained independence uh from the united kingdom all right and there are other maps out there but those maps show the uh the flags of the nations this one actually shows the names of the nations okay so over to the left we know the united states 1776 that's the declaration and that's the uh during the american revolutionary war which is 1775 to 1783 so they fought for their freedom but kept us enslaved all right canada 1931 you go to jamaica 1962. now what's interesting about jamaica is that jamaica was first colonized by the spanish it was conquered by christopher columbus in 1494 on on one of uh one of columbus's four voyages but great britain they go to war with spain in 1655 and they hijacked jamaica from spain okay and we're going to see this happen we're going to see if we if we just go if we just go back in history for a minute these european nations that that that we see france germany um italy um uh england these nations are going to start out as kingdoms formed by what are called barbarians or germanic people the anglos the saxons the jutes the lombards the picks the franks the allens the vandals the visigoths these europeans have been fighting and killing each other for hundreds of years okay then they organize themselves in the kingdoms then organize themselves into nations and then when these nations come out of the dark ages going to the renaissance age in about the 14th century the teachings that the african moors took into europe in 7-eleven a.d coming from ancient africa are going to bring europe out of the dark ages then they start exploring and they start conquering other people's land especially these caribbean nations and christopher columbus really helps the transatlantic slave trade to expand he conquers the bahamas puerto rico cuba honduras panama jamaica and then these as these other european nations get involved in the transatlantic slave trade because spain was the second one involved in the transatlantic slave trade portugal was the first one in 1441. okay and if you look at a map spain and portugal are right next to each other and spain and portugal right above morocco so the african moors are going from morocco into what was called the iberian peninsula today known as spain and portugal and you know they fight against the banners and visigoths and conquer them and conquer portions of spain and go throughout europe but when what you're going to see is you're going to see these europeans fighting and killing each other over these new lands that they're conquering and this is what causes the berlin conference to happen because they said look africa is large enough large enough for us to carve it up in the colonies we don't have to keep fighting and killing each other over africa because they've been doing that for hundreds of years okay so if we look at uh so you got jamaica you got the bahamas 1973 they declare independence now antigua and barbuda they declared an independence 1981 they're talking about becoming a republic and removing the uh uh king charles iii now as the as the head of state okay but if we go over to and then you got trinidad tobago you got barbados grenade a lot of these places that people especially europeans like to go on vacation these were conquered by europeans especially christopher columbus but also the british well if we go look at africa okay you look at these it's one thing to read it it's one thing to read the names there's another thing to see it on the map all these nations were conquered by great britain and they were colonies you got gambling they did now this these are the years they declared their independence in most of these nations great britain got from the berlin conference of 1884 and 1885. gambia 18 uh 1965 declared in the parents independence sierra leone 1961. we know ghana 1957 kwame nkrumah right and dr king went to ghana for the celebration and he went every year on the anniversary of the celebration as well dr king went to ghana for this nigeria 1960 botswana 1966 south africa 1931 lesotho which is an enclave of south africa lesotho is a country within south africa they declared their independence 1966 swaziland 1968 zimbabwe 1980 malawi 1964. tanzania 1961 kenya 1963 sudan 1956 egypt 1922. okay so if you just go from left to right across this map these are all nations that were colonies of great britain okay australia okay i understand and because of the partition of india in 1947 this is what splits uh pakistan from india let me let me just put it apart because i know we got to take another pause but oh i'm sorry no no no no you're good you're good because i think that and some people are checking in and you know looking at this map and you know some folks are saying like understanding like okay how we get that far back because some of these things happened before the king the queen was even born in some cases right exactly right um but i think that it's important that you you know in in 30 seconds or so give us a context in terms of you know why is understanding like all of these relationships all of these changes and why is this important to understand where the queen stood on on on on black and african issues right why is knowing this level of history important right so first of all i think it's important to note based upon their constitution and the role of the monarch they cannot speak out on political issues they don't take political positions however the monarchy for honey and that's uh i don't know when that went into effect but that that's what it is currently and it's been like that for the past few decades but they definitely benefit from this and they've been they they definitely benefit from the treachery from the colonialism from the history of slavery uh in in england being involved in slavery from eight from 1562 to 1834 when they officially abolished slavery now they paid 46 000 british slave owners reparations but didn't pay reparations to the 800 000 africans then that they freed okay this is in british history right so when you talk to like uh msnbc they were in kingston jamaica this past weekend on sunday and they were interviewing they interviewed the head of the universal negro improvement association they interviewed a brother who's a rastafarian these people who are the the descendants of those who were colonized by great britain they don't make a big distinction between one colonizer and another colonizer they they see them all together and i totally understand that because because great britain made billions if not trillions of dollars off of enslaving and colonizing people okay and extracting the mineral wealth from those nations so these nations are so the cries of reparations are becoming even louder and they should from these nations uh barbados who declared their independence uh who who became a republic former as a republican already declared their independence but formed as a republic uh uh november 2021 and named rihanna as a national hero so when you go read articles uh like this like the one from the new york times dealing with um there's a really good one from the new york times that just came out uh on friday in africa the queen's death renews a debate about the legacy of the british empire i saw that yeah these people whose relatives were killed like a professor uju anya uh from carnegie mellon university who's a prof who who was born in nigeria and in in uh her uh family she had family members killed during the uh nigerian civil war and we know that the great britain was involved in this they don't make a distinction some of them are happy that she's dead and and wish some others will go along with them okay what it's important i think i think this is important opportunity number one for the real history to be taught because more and more articles are being written about the involvement of great britain uh and colonialism and the wealth that great britain built from enslaving and torturing people and taking people's lands uh number one number two we i think we have to push for reparations now especially from great britain um and it's an international movement and i think we have to do this now more so than ever before and and some people may say well we want reparations from the united states i agree with that but the but the 13 colonies that became the united states started out as british colonies that was under control from great britain they were involved in slavery here in this land before the u.s even came into existence hey brother michael let's put you on pause because i know when we come back we're going to continue this conversation we're gonna get some we're gonna i certainly want to bring in my online culture crew we're gonna bring lisa and iman i'm loving everything you putting out there i think it makes so much sense for us to have a historical context but then he more importantly to understand the relationships and and look people are checking in and i think and robert redrick's you you put this out there robert this is the first time i'm hearing from you so i welcome you to to the show robert you said something i think that a lot of people probably feeling and they may not have they may not know how to say it but you said i never really studied or knew the background of the british college and i'm 54 years old shaking my head robert that's why you come to the black star network in the culture right you know what i'm saying because you've learned something and i mean this is this is this ain't this ain't this ain't racism no this ain't racist this is this is history this is actual fact this can be and you know what i'm saying and i think and i and i appreciate you robert because you're putting your vulnerability out there but we need to help to make the connections because in modern 2022 in our culture our culture is so like mishmash there's such a like a melting pot of facts and fiction it's hard for people to differentiate between the two and i think it's important that's why it's important that's why i love having you on and other voices on because the different to give us a distinction between what is actual history what is opinion right what is what is facts what our lies uh brother brother michael let's let's let's talk a little bit about this because you brought up a great point and i want to bring lisa and i know lisa and and mom were in the back they were just yeah i know you might eating it up she's she writing she rocking and rolling she's insane you know off of the history she let it she let it but uh talk to us about this reparation piece because you're right brother michael a lot of people are saying america needs to to give up on the money but we can't have a conversation about global reparations without looking at the british monarch we we we just can't and so i'm wondering with king charles being at the helm do you think that this is going to happen you think they're going to write some wrongs here i mean i think well martin made some apologies and years ago and then on a couple of moments i think then back in 2006 they apologized for for for like ex for torture and slavery of a couple of the islands in the caribbean but do you think there's going to be a turning of the tide here at this point well i want to stress this that king charles iii does not handle political affairs he does not have a government he is a symbol uh and they have a their government is parliament right like our house their their house of representatives and and u.s senate okay uh and they just got a new prime minister as well so that prime minister is like our president so uh but there is influence so for instance queen elizabeth ii had meetings with members of parliament every week okay private meetings not public meetings private meetings and there is what's going to happen is is you're having more talk now from caribbean nations for instance like there's an article from uh reuters.com uh charles succession stirs caribbean calls for reparations removal of monarch is head of state okay so they would uh the reparations would come from parliament so they had to put pressure on that form of government but what the the what's happening is because of more talk about about caribbean nations is causing the real history to come out and so let me give you a quick example back in 2015 i talked about this on my show because the day she they she died thursday september 8th i did a three-hour broadcast on the african history network uh uh so if people go to my website the african history network dot com we have it right on the home page you can watch it uh in 2015 then prime minister david cameron of britain went uh was planning a trip to jamaica okay and it was one of their former colonies the the jamaicans were demanding one an official apology for reparations to the official apology for slavery two they wanted reparations right anyone to talk david cameron basically said that was a long time ago let's be friends now and let's move forward and then and then and one one of the tricks that they try to play is that great britain did abolish slavery in 1834 but that was after like 272 years they got involved in slavery in 1562 with sir john hawkins the good news they were involved in slavery for about 272 years then they paid reparations to british slave owners about 19.9 million pounds i don't know what that translates to in dollars but they just finished paying off they had to take out a loan to to pay that to 46 000 british slave owners they just finished paying off the uh just finished paying off the loan in 2015. the 800 000 africans that were freed in 1834 they didn't give them any reparations so for you to then say well uh we ended the brutal slave trade well you were the ones that started it with with britain is is is like if i set a house on fire and then i call the fire department and the fire department comes and put it puts it out and the news cameras show up and i jump in from the news cameras and say i saw the whole thing i'm the one to call the fire department and then try to take credit no you're the one that started it and then started the british involvement not the transatlantic state street starting with portuguese so they're trying to play a shell game with us with those africans and say oh well we we we finally entered the the british slave trade and and they said we did it before the u.s well hell that's that's after you made billions of dollars off of it and then and then you still had colonies so a lot of a lot of the caribbean nations are continuing to move forward jamaica uh i think they're going to file a lawsuit uh to file for reparations as well but african people in this country african-americans we need to really pay attention to this and we need to go after great britain as well because these because the united states started out as what british colonies and you had slavery in all 13 of those colonies at one at one point in time as well so we really need to pay attention to this when it comes when it comes to getting reparations from the united states i'm all for that it's a different strategy understanding the us constitution understanding laws because we we need to learn how to make legal arguments for reparations unfortunately i hate to break people's hearts but a lot of these arguments for reparations we're making in the united states are not legal arguments and they're not rooted in the constitution and if somehow they do pass they're going to be overturned in court because we don't understand law and don't understand history at least um when we're listening to brother michael talking about this on this level it sounds like we need to have a different conversation i mean black folks in this country we need to kind of be re-taught on some things right because somewhere along the line and i'm not having this this conversation just because i want to be like oh i told you so i told you the queen is this or queen is that but somewhere along the line we didn't some history is being missed it's missing we're not we're not connecting the dots here and i'm wondering will history learning the true history of the monarchy it is involvement in everything from slavery to colonization and all that do you think that it will make any cultural shift for black folks and putting an us understanding because i see a lot of black folks you know still say hey man the queen is a good person not understanding the the bigger picture what should you well i i think that we always can have more knowledge i don't think having more knowledge has ever hurt anyone but i think that we do need to have a nuanced conversation i don't think people saying that it's okay for you to have what your views on the queen is necessarily a bad thing if that's what you want to believe but i think we do need to have the conversations about what it actually means with having the british monarch and why it even still exists i'm i'm one of those people honestly that it's like well they're just figureheads you have the prime minister's is making like what is the point basically it's just socialism socialism for white people because most of the money comes from taxes and of course the amount of wealth that they've amassed as a family so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to someone who's in the u.s and i think when you look at what's happened around the world yes we do need to have a conversation about slavery the transatlantic slave trade and how the british crown actually had a big part in that and then of course with the windbush scandal and what in 2018 and theresa may actually did come out and apologize for that and they they gave them some money but i think only a very small percentage of people actually received that money because basically they brought those citizens from the caribbean and some from from india and pakistan to help them after the war to build up the country with the promise that they would be able to become citizens there and then they kind of like pulled the rug from underneath of them and so we've seen this happen throughout history my biggest issue is why now because the queen has been ruling for 70 years and like we're just realizing all of these things now so i'm like that 2018 wasn't even that long ago like why weren't we having these conversations then like we're just starting to have these conversations now and i think we do have to have them in a more respectful manner i mean we've seen with with the irish in ireland they were saying you know ding dong the the queen is dead and all like we're seeing this all over the place and i don't think that it's wrong that people have their own opinions i think we do need to have nuanced conversations about the time to bring this up because this is someone's mother and grandmother and auntie and all of those things so i think it's a way to have this conversation in a nuanced way that will get stuff done but i don't know if we're quite having that conversation just yet um lisa uh not lisa uh uh iman what's your take on on on that i mean you know these in until this point that that is true like we should have probably had these discussions a long time ago but you know what i'm a true believer that everything happens in this divine timing right like like you know the fact that we're now having these conversations and i think part of it is just simply because we didn't know how we we we there are so many other things that were happening in the world at that time in 2018 2019 2020 hell 2015 we our minds was all over the place so so so what's your take on all of this so my question likely said is just why now the best example that popped in my head was imagine your mother you asked her for some fruit snacks right and she says you can't have and you can't get any but then once she goes away to work you go and sneak in that cabinet you get your fruit snacks so it's like now that our overseer is gone let's go run for freedom that's the best way i can explain it but it's like why now um i'm great that it was mentioned that you know here in america we aren't making legal arguments for reparations um i'm sure a lot of us think that just because we mention it or we gripe about how we've had to endure so much for so long that that should be enough or that the behavior was um unethical that should be enough i'm glad to hear that hey we gotta do a little bit more research and go back to the books and actually make a legit argument to go after um uh britain to get our reparations my question is how do we start where do we put the footwork in let's get the ball rolling now black social media black twitter and tick tock the things i've seen and likely said it should be a respectful thing she is still a human she was still somebody's parent blah blah blah but we are i think this her passing is bringing black people black culture even uh our caribbean brothers and sisters on a uh one team where we're we're starting to become on one accord like hey even though i'm across the water here we're still black and still at the end of the day we're all rooted in the same thing i think you start don't expose us that we are the same people we just got to different stops with the same exact people so i i think this is going to be a better outcome for the culture as far as us as black people uh not seeing each other as separate or or as opposition just because you have a jamaican accent and i have an american accent i'm not as black or you're not as black like we can take all that stuff out of it the lines i think are becoming less blurred especially when we learn the history of it what we just learned just now and so for some people that may have not known have not known that they can now share it with their relatives or share with their friends that may not have agreed with their opinion it's i think we want to we're on the right track i i think this like you said uh ferrari this is the divine moment and i think this is going to push the culture forward as far as uh black people yeah i mean i i would agree and brother michael i mean i want to bring you in to answer that question of you know we're having these conversations now but we could have had them four years ago we could imagine five or even 10 years ago what stopped us from being in that place or is it just because to iman's point we're starting to come like all of these things that are happening are creating the winds of change where black folks are starting to see like you know what we we really are one people regardless of the land mass that we may be on we are all part of one one struggle right and you know what i think that's a divine that's a divine uh uh uh you know interruption i think that's that thing that could be part of why we're we're having these conversations and i don't mind it like i say if it's about timing for us to come together we sometimes in order for unity to happen some other things have to happen and i'm going to happen for us to get the push to want to come together yeah so yeah so what happens is is when you have like huge events like this and a ton of articles written and it deals with history it starts bringing out different aspects of that history um in 2021 when you had the 100th commemoration of the tulsa race massacre right then information started coming out about the creek indians owning african slaves and uh how tulsa oklahoma was founded by creek indians around 1834 who got pushed off their land in southeastern united states because the indian removal act of 1830 and you you started hearing about the black friedman indian treaties the 1866 where those africans who were owned by the choctaw chickasaw creek cherokee and seminole indians got land and there they were in oklahoma so a lot of the early african-american landowners in tulsa got land from those indian trees okay so that so more information about the tulsa race massacre started coming out because there was so much there's there was national attention on it tons of articles being written so different aspects of that history started coming out well when you have an international figure like queen elizabeth ii numerous articles were written and for that that first day that she passed away there was not a lot of talk about british colonialism and the britain involvement the british involvement is slavery but like in mainstream media there was not a whole lot of talk but you had uh people on social media you had people of african descent on social media pushing that issue and then that second day on friday you started having those articles being written to deal with another aspect of her life and her life is historical and her life is tied to history you started having articles in mainstream new york times washington post usa today cnn being written and you started hearing from africans in these different nations that were colonized by great britain you started hearing from uh people whose family members were killed by by the british okay during their fight for independence like in kenya or in nigeria so now is is calls that uh that that dynamic to shift okay and you're going to see more of that as well because this is international and more more of this history now i'm seeing articles written about uh the colonization of india okay there's an article from cnn dealing with this so come on this this this this is going to continue all this real history is coming out and what this does is and see what what what what the monarchy has done they've done a good marketing campaign right because they market the the the uh the uh the glamour the majesty the gold carriage the the 30 horses pulling the gold carriage the regalia the uniforms buckingham palace kensington palace they they market this magic but they don't deal with the history of the colony colonization slavery and torture that generated the billions of dollars to pay for all of what you see okay so they so they've done a good marketing campaign with this also and lastly this also ties into um a lot of the children's stories that we were told here in this country cinderella and snow white and king midas and things like this and when you research a lot of these stories that we tell our true a lot of these children stories they originate in england because this was an english colony a lot of those stories originate in england and they had and they had a more violent nature to them the violent nature was torn down to be told to children okay so you you got to research you got to research a lot of these stories you tell us rapunzel and things like this and you the prince charming all this stuff that stuff comes from england and and and so then you wonder why okay so why do african some app some african americans why are they mesmerized by the queen and stuff like that well you taught it to your two you taught it to them when they were children that's why hey hey look brother michael i i i man man oh man whoa whoa i i think i i mean but my question i guess still is because we've always known that england had a part in a lot of the atrocities around the world it's not that we didn't because the queen will not be ever held to account for any of those things because she's gone so now this does fall down to charles or king charles iii i i don't know if we because i don't know if it was kate and william who actually was in gym it was in one of the caribbean islands early i think it was in jamaica earlier this year and they were pushing for reparations if we because my fear is the same things that's going to happen we're going to talk about it and then it's going to go away it tends to be the pattern especially here in the u.s i'm not so sure about around the world but here in the u.s we think about it for a minute and then it kind of goes away because it's not on the forefront yup right let me just ask a question when you said they were pushing for reparations who was the day you were referring to jamaica so the jamaicans there was an activist team i want to make a clarification yes because kate cause kate and harry or whoever was they were not pushing for uh william yeah okay no no no no i want to make a clear distinction no it was jamaican acting jamaicans have been pushing for uh reparations continuously um when uh november 2021 when barbados uh declared they were becoming a republic print then prince charles was there for the ceremony and he read an official statement and he talked about the abhorrent atrocities of slavery okay now he didn't he did not give an apology for slavery he did recognize the aborn atrocities of slavery but that's as far as they'll go and that's as far as parliament will go also so they got to be pushed farther i don't mean parliament funkadelic george clinton for those okay one nation under the group i'm talking about parliament in in england so they have to be pushed okay uh but see yeah this is the but but this fight continues but african people around the world have to unite okay african people those that were in those former colonies and also the us because this was a colony of great britain as well we were colonized by them also some of us still have a colonized mindset we have to unite force reparations do you think that that i'm sorry do you think that's why you see a lot of the countries like nigeria they say they have a conflicted view of the queen because she did do some of the decolonization that you've seen around the world and but yet she is attached to the crown which did all of these horrible things is that why we're seeing them be there's such a reserve on the heads of these countries to actually come out and say and be forceful with this language that they're using when talking about the british crown so so it depends upon who you talk to in the country if you talk to uh president mubarak of nigeria yeah he's going to be more he's going to be reserved and he's going to talk about how great the queen was and things like this you talked to you taught the africans in nigeria who uh whose family members were killed uh because of the british empire they're not going to be so kind and yes decolonization happened under queen elizabeth but it wasn't because of queen elizabeth the decomposition happened it's because those nations took up arms and and fought against great britain or they they declared their independence it wasn't it wasn't because of queen elizabeth that uh great uh that uh ghana got it got his freedom more because nigeria got his freedom or things like this so so so we have to be clear so part of her legacy is there have been different articles written that deal with how her legacy is complicated because decolonization did happen under her but decolonization did not happen because of her it just happened a whole watch nations declared their independence these african nations and you know and in other nations declare their independence from great britain but it wasn't because of her let me let me just put let me just pause this thing right here because we're gonna have to take another break but brother michael you have been highly insightful i wanna i wanna bring in just a couple of quotes from our culture crew online culture crew because folks have been chatting about all of this as we've been hearing from you and and i've been hearing from our wonderful culture crew members uh janelle you checked in and you said this is what hems us up other nations know more about history about our history then we do we have the nerve to perpetuate the myth of exceptionalism for example so called fba versus immigrants yup uh you don't like my music you checked in good to hear from you you say growing up in north ireland we used the queens to get up the noses of the nationalists i always thought monarchy was silly though um wow uh rj mckenzie thank you for checking in you said britain needs to give my jamaican brothers and sisters their reparations now they started it they should fix it how about that truth is power you checked in and said the 13 colonies were put in place to push the movement of the charter that was given from the crown everybody paid reparations to the crown that's how they got their power where is our cut that uh where's our cut we built yeah absolutely and machole you checked in and says apologies for the co for the colonization of african nations caribbean nations is not sufficient handled with the money due to african nations the us needs to hand over money to african americans as well uh real brooklyn you checked in and said the queen is not to blame the monarchy is basically there for constitutional duties it has no formal role in the head of nation in a nutshell they are just there for theatrics brother michael now right they still benefit from the accumulated wealth the monarchy is worth about 28 billion dollars queen elizabeth had a net worth of 500 million dollars okay so uh it is true they're they're figureheads but look at what they're holding up you got to understand this history the totality of it okay but they get taxes too right like don't the the british people and they pay taxes and they get some of that tax money too to live off of right yeah yes yeah but but their role is it's true their role is not a political role but um once again you have to look at this the totality not just queen elizabeth like on the day of her death you got to look at the totality of this history of great britain and i think that is that's that's the real challenge that's facing not just black people in america not just african and nations but the whole world we are in a space now that every when you're talking about high profile leaders like queen elizabeth ii and i said this yesterday you have to look at the big picture a person who's been in this role for 70 years they're not they're not they they are the institution you know what i mean that's that's that they are the institution and so we we do have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and more importantly we have to make sure that we have a a a factual historical look so that way our context and our understanding and our opinions and judgment is still rooted in something that can be deemed as credible and i think that's that's the big thing brother michael you got to find the word yeah yeah this article that you have up right here this is from cnn cloud of colonialism hangs over queen elizabeth's legacy in africa if you scroll down if the if those in the control room if you scroll down and scroll down to the picture with kwame improvement now that's where uh the picture that they're showing now she's in uh uh i think it's uh nigeria uh she's in but scroll down to the picture scroll down to the picture where she's with kwame nkrumah and it talks about tragic period okay and then scroll down right before that right below that it says in south africa one opposition party the economic freedom fighters the eff was unequivocal uh in what they said about queen elizabeth they said we do not mourn the death of elizabeth because to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and african history end quote our interaction with britain has been one of pain death and dispossession and of the dehumanization of the african people okay and they have a link there where you can read their full statement on their twitter page um but i know the press for time but i just want to talk quickly about my online classes absolutely brother okay talk to us real quick all right so uh everybody visit our website the african history network dot com the african history network dot com i teach uh online history classes we have one that just started up this uh past saturday eight week online course ancient chemist the moors and the ma alpha understanding the transatlantic slave trade where they didn't teach you in school so we get deep into this history that class is basically going to meet on thursdays as soon as you register for it you can go uh uh watch the class we just did saturday we do the sessions live all the sessions are archived and recorded and you all can scroll down the uh page all the sessions are archived and recorded you can go back and watch it anytime uh today keep scrolling keep scrolling yep okay so right here we have the information for the class uh today thursday uh 7 p.m eastern standard time i have uh class number one uh from the civil war to the civil rights movement and black power 1865 to 1968 starting up and if you scroll down a little more you'll see the uh the of the second class from the civil war to the civil rights movement in black power 1865-1968 this class uh we start in 1803 with the louisiana purchase and the haitian revolution because those those two events are related and we go through history chronologically we see what leads up to the civil war taking place we studied reconstruction 1865 1877 jim crow era civil rights movement black power movement great migration world war one world war ii uh to see what happened to us after slavery ended how we got to where we are today to understand where we uh need to go from here okay register for the classes and we have a bundle pack as well uh the african history network dot com the african history network com so we'll see you in class thank you brother and michael lynn hotep who is the uh uh uh an educator he's a scholar he's a historian and he's also does the host of the african history network uh podcast make sure y'all check him out at theafricanhistorynetwork.com brother michael always a pleasure to have you on thank you so much thank you brother appreciate everything you do bro all right thank you brother all right hatred on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their minds as an angry pro-trump mob storms the u.s capitol we're about to see the rise of what i call white minority resistance we have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting i think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial this is part of american history every time that people of color have made progress whether real or symbolic there has been what carol anderson at emory university calls white rage as a backlash is the rise of the proud boys and the boogaloo boys america there's going to be more of this guys this country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people the fee that they're taking our jobs they're taking our resources they're taking our women this is why fear [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Roland S. Martin

Views: 468,809

Keywords: Roland Martin, #RolandMartinUnfiltered, Black Star Network

Id: 6luqclzkB9E

Length: 49min 23sec (2963 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2022