Political and social commentator Angela Rye let author Malcolm Gladwell have it on this week’s latest episode of Hell of A Week with Charlamagne Tha God.
On the Charlamagne Tha God-hosted show, the panel talked about the week it’s been regarding Queen Elizabeth’s death and Britain’s days of mourning. Gladwell had nice things to say about the Queen, recalling from how his mother loved her.
But Rye had different things to say, succinctly checking Gladwell on his assertion that Queen Elizabeth's power was merely symbolic in nature.
“There are people who have power that is largely symbolic, she is one of them, but we should not ignore the power of that symbolism,” she said. She talked about Meghan Markle, the American actress married to Prince Harry, who recently admitted that it was only when she was an adult that she began to understand her Blackness. That Blackness has been at the excruciating center of abuse Markle has received from racist members of the British public, including elements of the Firm, the working arm of the Royal Family.
"You have someone who just said recently…that she really only just began to identify as a Black woman in her adult life and her adult life was treated with great disdain by this woman of symbolic power," Rye said.
“I also think it’s important for us to understand that in [Queen Elizabeth’s] role of symoblic power, they [the British] colonized 30 percent of Africa. When we talk about places we like to vacation, Lenard–Anguilla, Turks and Caicos–that is part of the British West Indies.”
“So even when we talk about your mother who adored the Queen, we have to understand Black people’s infatuation with systems of power that have also abused us,” she ended, to applause.
