This Brave New World, XXXIX
Caribbean tour ...
a boy lacing his fingers
through the holes
in the chain-link fence
between pickets and royals
FYI: Time, March 24: Prince William and Kate's Tour Was Meant to Secure the Monarchy in the Caribbean. Instead, It's Raising New Questions About Its Future
The news arrived at a difficult moment for the royals. The day before the couple’s arrival in the country, one hundred Jamaican academics, politicians, and cultural figures signed an open letter calling for the royal family and British government to apologize and pay reparations for subjecting the island to colonial rule and slavery.
The letter’s consignatories describe Prince William and Kate as “direct beneficiaries of the wealth accumulated by the royal family…from the trafficking and enslavement of Africans”. In reference to the Queen’s Jubilee, the letter reads: “We see no reason to celebrate 70 years of the ascension of your grandmother to the British throne because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, has perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind.”
“Slavery was abhorrent and it never should have happened,” he said. “I strongly agree with my father, the Prince of Wales [Great Talker and Little Doer], who said in Barbados last year that the appalling atrocity of slavery forever stains our history.”
