So what does a British person look like?
Priss Choss met a woman in a receiving line and royally asked her where she’s from.
I met Prince Charles this week at the Commonwealth People’s Forum at which I was a speaker (on a day whose itinerary was entitled Politics of Hope: Taking on Injustice in the Commonwealth). It was part of the buildup to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, the summit of leaders of 53 countries representing more than 2 billion people.
I shook the prince’s hand with my right hand. In my other, I was holding a copy of an anthology, We Mark Your Memory: Writing from the Descendants of Indenture, in which I have an essay published. I told him that my mother was born in Guyana and that the anthology had collected hidden histories of indenture.
“And where are you from?” asked the prince.
“Manchester, UK,” I said.
“Well, you don’t look like it!” he said, and laughed. He was then ushered on to the next person.
Hahaha; so funny. Doesn’t look like it how? Because Mancunians all have five eyes, or three arms, or solid gold hair? No, because I’ve been there, and that was not the case. So…?
Prince Charles was endorsed by the Queen, in her opening speech to the heads of government, to be the future head of the Commonwealth: it’s her “sincere wish” that he become so. That the mooted next leader of an organisation that represents one-third of the people on the planet commented that I, a brown woman, did not look as if I was from a city in the UK is shocking.
Well, you see, it’s like this: we want the cheap labor and the resources, but we don’t want the people. That’s fair enough isn’t it?!
So what does a British person look like? A British person can look like me. A British person can have black or brown, not only white, skin and still be just as British (this shouldn’t need to be spelled out in black and white). I could have proven that I was born in Manchester and that I am British, as I had my passport in my handbag – I’d needed it to get through the venue’s security.
Yet I can’t tell Prince Charles exactly where I am from originally – that old chestnut. Why? Because the British destroyed much of the evidence that my ancestors were shipped over from India in the 19th century to toil for the empire as indentured labourers on sugar colonies in the Caribbean.
I have been to the National Archives in Georgetown, Guyana, to search for my ancestral history and stared down a gaping hole where records of lives should have been. The British destroyed so much that could properly explain and evidence our identities.
Have a nice cup of tea.
Not much different to Harry Windsor (the half-blood prince) a couple of years ago when he met the brilliant comedian, Stephen K. Amos, after a show. Amos is first-generation British, his parents coming to London from Nigeria in the 1960’s, and he speaks with a very middle-class English accent.
Harry’s first words to Amos? “You don’t sound like a black fellow.”
I’d say it runs in the family, but not necessarily genetically!
Since his father is notorious for racist gaffes, we could expect that the Prince would be somewhat more careful, apparently not.
An elected head of the Commonwealth is long overdue, the organisation should abandon its quasi imperial system and join the 21st century. One day it might even be useful.
I had heard many years ago the queen was so displeased with Charles over his scandals and divorce that he would be passed over and William would become king instead. Interesting that either that was not true or she’s had a change of heart.
The whole thing is a joke anyway. Apparently Queen Elizabeth, then a young princess, was very inspiring to the country during World War II, and the historical memory of that has shielded her from any real challenge. Many [citation needed] predict when she passes away her descendants will quickly wear out their welcome and the whole farce will mercifully come to an end. For much less money they can hire some people from Medieval Times to wear royalty outfits and wave at people.
Skeletor,
I’m not an expert in British constitutional law, but I’m fairly confident that the Queen does not have the power to decide who will or will not succeed her, without an Act of Parliament. So any rumor about some secret decision to disinherit Charles shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Of course Charles could refuse to accept the Throne when the time comes, or officially relinquish his place in the line of succession. I’ve heard it argued over the years that he ought to do so because of his unpopularity and/or unsuitability to the job. And occasionally there’s a rumor that he will do so, and I have no idea how much stock to put in those. My inclination is to doubt it very much, for at least four reasons I can think of:
1) It would take an extraordinary person to say, effectively, “I have been given an extremely privileged life with the understanding that I would eventually have one job, for which I was trained my entire life. But despite all of that training and support and preparation, it turns out that I would be so desperately bad at the job, or at least, my subjects all think that I would be so desperately bad at it, that I would jeopardize the very institution that it represents, and so I must decline and instead live out a life of privilege with no responsibility.” I’m not sure if I mean extraordinary in a positive sense here. Certainly it would require a great deal of humility. I don’t have any particular insight into Prince Charles, but he does not strike me as that sort of person.
2) I don’t know how seriously to take the series The Crown, but I have heard it remarked that one thing it gets right is the reaction of the Windsors to the Abdication, i.e. that they viewed Edward’s actions as the worst sort of selfishness and dereliction of duty. It seems unlikely to me that the Queen’s son would view passing on the job as any kind of noble or humble act, but rather as a fairly selfish one. Like it or not, it was Charles’s job from birth to prepare for the role, and to refuse to take it would be an admission of failure on a level I can’t imagine.
3) I don’t think it would help save the monarchy. It might do the opposite. If Charles is to pass on the job — the second man in three generations to do so — because William has better poll numbers and a younger, prettier, wife, then it seems to me that this precedent just invites more questions about the monarchy than Charles’s accession would. If it turns out that Princess Charlotte is smart and charming and popular but her older brother George is a bit of a dolt, then will there be clamoring for George to yield his place just like Grandpa did? And if you’re going to start choosing monarchs based on their popularity and public image or perceived ability, then why not just go the whole way and elect them, or have Parliament appoint them to fixed terms like Governors-General in Canada and Australia? Then at least you’d have an entire nation of talent to choose from rather than a single family.
4) If it was going to happen, I think it would have been done a long time ago. The time to do it — if at all — would have been when Charles got divorced and his popularity cratered, and there was the prospect that Charles might spend three or four decades on the throne. Or at least after William became of age. Now, my understanding is that Charles has bounced back a bit in popularity (although I agree with Ophelia that there’s still plenty to dislike) and the public has warmed to Camilla a bit, and it’s unlikely he’d be in for a long reign. No doubt there will be a ton of “abolish the monarchy” think pieces written when the Queen passes, but I think that would happen even if Charles was out of the picture.
[…] a comment by Screechy Monkey on So what does a British person look […]
Screechy Monkey @ 4
The British monarchy has been extraordinarily resilient despite numerous scandals, it’s something of a mystery. Perhaps that is because the institution is so entangled with the period when the sun never set on the Empire and Britain ruled the waves. So probably any of the royals would survive in the job as long as he or she was reasonably sane. The one recent exception is probably Edward who appears to have had pro-Nazi or a least pro-German sympathies. His abdication probably solved a problem for the British political elites. (Insert favourite conspiracy theory here).
Wait a minute. Is she invoking some conspiracy, some after the fact erasure? Or simply the absence of record typical of reckless, greedy bidness.
JtD:
The Brits have always been meticulous record-keepers. If the records aren’t there, it is because they were destroyed.
How much easier that was in the days before modern communications! One would expect that it would be much harder this century. And yet, the records of the Caribbean people brought over to help re-build the country post-WWII, when I was a child, were very recently entirely destroyed, despite protests, when the department storing them moved; allegedly for reasons of a lack of space in the new building. Very convenient for the government, who had decided to kick them out of the country again, because they are becoming inconveniently old.