Èzili Dantò's brief note on a Black woman marrying into the royal House of Windsor on Malcolm X's birthday (below the fold)
Sooooo, England doesn't have a Black presence?
I won't give you a litany of the House of Windsor's history with genocide, monopoly capitalism, enslavement of Blacks, plunder, pillage, the deceit, weaponized drugs, their imperialism templates, general destruction of Black history, people, information and artifacts worldwide nor Britain's current participation in the recolonization of Africa through AFRICOM and Haiti with the UN proxy presence in Haiti. Let's just simplify and ask: What about justice for the Windrush generation? (Go to Britain's Windrush generation threatened with deportation Deportation scandal hits thousands who helped rebuild U.K. after WWII https://goo.gl/hZ78MS).
Does the Empire's love marriage today, between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, extend love to the Windrush generation in England who, like the 1929 Haitian-Dominicans in the DR, are threatened with civil genocide, ethnic cleansing, and expulsions? Extend to us? Or, is Meghan Markle an Obama with tits…where her personal “success” is used politically to emphasize the end of racism in England?
What does it mean that Markle maintained her cultural anchor in the middle of all that Buckingham Palace whiteness? That she didn't submerge her Blackness? Wasn't this royal wedding fanfare also a real political and strategic move by the House of Windsor to rebrand and survive? And how should we feel about the lone Black mother, who raised her child alone, standing alone at the wedding? Could Doria Loyce Ragland have followed protocol and, at least, accepted an escort from Buckingham Palace…to celebrate the marriage of her daughter, now the Duchess of Sussex. Where was her Black family, sister girlfriends? Was it choice, courage, feminism or what? These are questions involving the Black woman narrative. All this made the ceremony interesting and unique. But above all, this was also a teaching moment – a US story related to the Black Civil-Rights industry integration stories. A “mulatto factor”/tragic Black elite story about re-entrenching collective Black oppression, and a traditional story of Black fatherlessness too, the missing alpha Black males (the Ogou-Malcolm/Desalin fathers and soldiers), in the era of Obama and Trump…
I'll write down some of my impressions here. But feel free to address any of these threads and questions productively today on the birthday of our hero for revolution, Malcolm X. How would Malcolm X answer these question? What else would he ask?
That being said, it's also true that Meghan Markle used her platform to be Black in an all-white space and that was unexpected. We know that Black people in white spaces mostly always leave behind their Black culture. Markle didn't do that. In fact, there were so many Black cultural accents during the wedding ceremony at the St. George Chapel, that at one point, I was waiting for Prince Harry and Meghan to jump the broom, and do the electric slide.
“Stand by me” is one of my all-time favorite songs. Together with the Etta James song, Amen (This Little Light of Mine), played as the couple left the St Georges chapel along with the Gospel Choir, this made the royal wedding, a viscerally, in-your-face, Black wedding and, with Black culture put front and center. It was surprising considering how the media has played down Meghan Markle being a Black woman throughout the media blitz. And the Black minister preaching the sermon…B.E.King… Will this move to rebrand the House of Windsor work to further entrench and maintain the Western status quo over the global south? It's a seductive political move.
Coming from the era where Black musicianship was relegated to N.W.A-type Trap music, I really liked that billions of people got to watch Black excellence in the form of the 19-year-old cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who played at the royal wedding.
Also welcomed the simple Meghan Markle wedding dress. Why? Because Black women celebrity figures are mostly so over-sexualized. Meghan Markle's overly boring wedding dress, not obviously showing every curve and bump, was a counter to the current hoochie-mama, Cardi B- “I am mixed-and-happily-promiscuous-stereotype that's well franchised by the rap industry and the six corporate conglomerates controlling all media and news in the United States. On the other hand, the use of Martin Luther King in that setting was jarring and suspect. For, history shows us, that love and loving the traditional enemy doesn't conquer all.
“…the ways I can be co-opted by working with those more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination than I could ever be…”– Èzili Dantò, The Red, Black & Moonlight series
Are these wedding accents and cultural choices simultaneously an appropriation? A co-option by “those more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination than any Black woman, including Megan Markle, could ever be? Yes politically, yes. It's an appropriation definitely. It doesn't escape our notice that Meghan Markle once solely identified as “Black.” But now is solely identified, in the media, as “mixed” or “bi-racial” for the purposes of the re-branding that Buckingham Palace's colonial politics. Yes, the Mulatto Factor, as we saw with Obama, or two centuries ago with the betrayals of the Haiti revolution by the mulatto generals, Petion and Boyer, does work to extend white colonial fascism and its global warmongering, plunder and oppression of the African masses.
Yes politically, yes. It's an appropriation definitely. This ability to ignore the “one drop rule” at will and be Black-by-choice, leaving those without choice to stare from afar but then, at a whim, close up when the royal wedding calls up every Black cultural accent except jumping the broom!
This strategy reflects and represents the mulatto idea that freedom and liberation for the Black masses is integration with the injustice systems. It continues because it helps maintain the elite's fascism, brutality and imperialism wrapped in a fairy tale.
It's a false equivalency to equate symbolism with the end of oppression for Blacks. This is a House of Windsor nonsense. But it's also didn't escape our notice that Prince Harry, though, was preciously emotional during the ceremony. He looks like he really loves his queen and is not running away from her Black culture and background and that was nice to see. Seductive as the rat that blows on the injury before biting you again, and again.
To sum it up, the inhumanity of the whole history of the House of Windsor (aka House of Whiteness) aside, the Black elements in the wedding were not “mixed” at all. It was Black – the ever trending culturally Black, a quick but covert symbol for the “common touch” and inclusivity. Yep, we be exotic and work well as a good purse or shoe sometimes, an accessory, like the Kardashian's disposable Black male partners.
Doria Ragland and Meghan Markle
But, these personal choices, as I continually say, of who you're sleeping with, doesn't necessarily make you progressive and working for justice, global wealth distribution and the liberation of the collective Black. Indeed, I can say with certainty, that the Windsor power Meghan Markle has acquired by marriage, won't extend to bettering the “commoners” life – for neither the Black or the white collective, worldwide. It won't. Monarchy cannot structurally do this. At all. The 53 flowers sewed onto Meghan Markle's veil also symbolize some of the 53 nations and their colonial ownership by the English Commonwealth.
I think Prince Harry is a very lucky rich elite to have acquired these two beautiful Black women – Meghan Markle and Doria Loyce Ragland – in his life as family. But I know how the global elites use their approved-celebrities to legitimize their colonial oppression; how they traditionally use the “American dream” and English fairy tale narrative to seduce the “commonfolk” into thinking that there is no STRUCTURAL hindrance to all of us pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and becoming one of them! The Èzili Network knows there is no common touch, no public action of “The Firm” that's not a manipulation.
So, if you're looking for entertainment, balance and a reality show beyond this royal colonial brainwashing and rebranding that this Buckingham palace fanfare was, just remember the journey of Prince Harry's mother, Diana Spencer, Princess of Whales and go listen to Anita Baker's song about fairy tales. Enjoy – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vrDThlryU
Be well folks. Write and let me know your thoughts.
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