As Monday’s state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II marks the end of a national period of mourning in Britain, we speak with the U.K.'s first professor of Black studies, Kehinde Andrews, about the generational difference in perceptions of the queen within his Jamaican family, which he lays out in his recent essay, “I Don't Mourn the Queen.” He also describes the brutal legacy of the British slave trade and the British Empire, which makes the monarchy a symbol of white supremacy that should not be mourned, but rather abolished. “This is an old institution — deeply racist, deeply classist, deeply patriarchal. It just needs to go. And this is the perfect time to discuss when it should end,” says Andrews.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.