Uju Anya Doubles Down On ‘Excruciating’ Queen Elizabeth Tweet
Source: Dan Kitwood / Getty
One thing to know about Carnegie Mellon University professor Uju Anya—she doesn’t GAF about what you think about what she thinks. After sparking white outrage with her tweet wishing Queen Elizabeth II an “excruciating” death, Anya made an appearance on the This Week In White Supremacy podcast to generally say: “I said what TF I said, and may your pain be excruciating as you die mad about it.” (I may have added a bit to what she actually said.)
“In other words, I said what I f***** said,” Anya exclaimed after the host read aloud her tweet from last week proclaiming that “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.”
MORE: How Queen Elizabeth II And Her Reign Are Being Remembered Matters
Anya admitted she “had an emotional reaction and an emotional outburst” that led her to send her original tweet after hearing of the queen’s failing health and impending death (she noted that she sent the tweet before Elizabeth actually died).
“I was triggered by this news,” she said. “It went deep into pain and trauma for me due to my family experience with the rule of this monarch.” She also said her tweet was “not planned,” and “very spontaneous,” but also “extremely real.”
“This was a ruler. The very crown she had on her head signified the fact that she’s a monarch was made from plunder. Diamonds. Blood diamonds,” Anya explained. “The throne that she was sitting on is a throne of blood. So you cannot say that she’s just this little old lady or this figurehead that really had nothing to do with anything and it was just the British government without relating it directly to her because she was directly benefiting, her very position as a monarch, the palace she lived in… were all paid for by our blood.
“People expected me to be calm or to be…when the person who literally paid money for bombs and guns and military supplies to come and massacre your people is dying, you’re not supped to dance,” she continued.
I just love it when Black activists and intellectuals refuse to tap-dance in the rain amid a down-pour of white tears. I love it when we can speak our truth and say to the enraged white world around us: “I won’t apologize and I don’t care that your tighty-whiteys are all in a bunch.”
Black Twitter simply didn’t care when the rest of the Twitter-verse witnessed it turning the queen’s grave into a Black wedding reception-like dance floor.
We didn’t care that they didn’t understand. We didn’t care that they were upset about it. We spoke our hearts unapologetically and we didn’t bend to any demand that we respect a dead colonizer.
So, when Anya said, “I said what I f***** said”—I felt that.
SEE ALSO:
Black Twitter’s Remorseless Response To Queen Elizabeth’s Death, Explained
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