Colonialism is an Everyday Story

In the aftermath of the announcement of the death of the British Queen Elizabeth, Uju Anya tweeted: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.” (Anya is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, my alma mater, though the phrase literally means “nourishing mother” and I can’t say I got that from Carnegie Mellon.

April 1, 2023 | Source: husseini | by Sam Husseini

In the aftermath of the announcement of the death of the British Queen Elizabeth, Uju Anya tweeted: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.”

(Anya is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, my alma mater, though the phrase literally means “nourishing mother” and I can’t say I got that from Carnegie Mellon. Some seem to feel that they somehow got that from the late monarch, and I can’t say that I see that either.)

Twitter deleted the tweet and Carnegie Mellon put out a statement effectively condemning Anya’s remarks, each of which I think are absurd and dubious as others have noted.

But then Anya retweeted a tweet from Eugene Scott, national political reporter at the Washington Post.

The answer to Scott’s question, “When is the appropriate time to talk about the negative impact of colonialism?” is everyday. You’re swimming in it.