“The View” panelist Sonny Hostin on Friday defended a tweet in which a Carnegie Mellon professor wished the deceased monarch “excruciating” pain before her death.
Hostin said she once lived and studied in London and noted “we all love glam and pageantry” of the British royal family. But she asserted that Queen Elizabeth had presided over widespread injustice during her reign.
“I think we can mourn the Queen and not the empire, because if you really think about what the monarchy was built on, it was built on the backs of black and brown people,” Hostin said.
“She wore a crown of pillaged stones from India and Africa. And now what you’re seeing, at least in the black communities that I’m a part of, they want reparations.”
Hostin called for King Charles to take steps to reform the royal family.
“It’s time for him to modernize this monarchy and it’s time for him to provide reparations to all of those colonies,” Hostin added.
Fellow panelist Joy Behar jumped into the discussion with a defense of the Queen.
“You do know that Queen Elizabeth fought against apartheid in South Africa?” Behar asked.
“That was one of the good things she did,” Hostin responded.
“She also was very angry with [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, who refused to do sanctions against South Africa, so she tried, I think, her best, if she could, every once in a while. She really didn’t have that much power,” Behar added. “She was a figurehead.”
The discussion shifted to the tweet posted by Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Billionaire Jeff Bezos was among countless users who criticized the post, which has been removed for violations of Twitter’s rules.
“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying,” the tweet said. “May her pain be excruciating.”
Carnegie Mellon later released a statement noting it did not “condone” Anya’s remarks. The university has been silent on whether she will face disciplinary action.
“The View”’s Sara Haines brought up the tweet, referring to it as “awful.”
“That is literally answering with such a hateful heart and it wasn’t the tweet — almost more shocking was the tens of thousands of likes on that tweet,” Haines said. “To me, that was a moment where you’re answering the very hate you reject with hate.”
Hostin responded by defending Anya’s point.
“It was a thieving, raping, genocidal empire,” Hostin said. “That’s all true.”
