By Emil Guillermo

The same week Queen Elizabeth died at age 96, back in the news for the unveiling of their White House portraits were Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

BOMO are reminders: Don’t go overboard on the Queen.

In other words, if I say Queen and you say Latifah, or even Beyonce, you’re keeping it real.

Have compassion for Queen Elizabeth II as a human being, sure. But remain repulsed by all that the monarchy stands for.

Tradition? You mean like the hundreds of thousands of Kenyan Kikuyu people imprisoned in the 1950s in what Harvard professor Caroline called the “British Gulag.”

It was so bad that finally in 2013, survivors of the Gulag sued and forced the British to quietly settle with 5,228 survivors. Reparations payments of 3,800 pounds each were for “torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration,” according to a Parliament spokesman.

It all happened during the Queen’s watch.

Kenya was just a fraction of the British Empire’s violent past. All of it together, from the Middle East, to Asia, to Africa, subjugated at one time more than 700 million people. It makes the Queen the nostalgic mascot of white supremacy, in a tradition where “I’m royal and you’re not,” means much.

Granted, the Queen had no real “political” power; but as “head of state,” she still had enormous influence in Great Britain and the dozen or so countries in the Commonwealth. It made her a bit of a contradiction. A hood ornament but not the engine of the old British Empire. She was a living museum piece, a reminder of a repulsive imperial past. A colonizer’s deodorizer.

In 1983, I recall covering the Queen when she visited San Francisco. I was not her loyal subject, neither were the 700 Irish protestors outside the St. Francis Hotel. Then as now, I am gratefully reminded how America has no monarchy.

But it can have a president and first lady like Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.

The day the Obamas were back in the White House a Washington Post investigation exposed how a former disgraced president, the one after Obama, had documents containing the top-secret nuclear capabilities of a foreign government, at his Mar-a-Lago civilian home.

On a day like that, we all realized how much we missed “No Drama Obama.”

Barack Obama kept things light so we could remember happier times.

“Thanks for letting us invite a few friends to the White House,” Barack Obama said to Biden at the start. “We will try not to tear up the place.” A burst of laughter put people at ease. But maybe because we all know he couldn’t tear up the place any worse than President 45.

We all know what Obama meant through just a few of his associated acronyms. Health care through ACA (The Affordable Care Act). A life in America for the young, innocent, and undocumented through DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals). A home no longer “underwater” due to the bad loans banks made during the recession thanks to HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program).

But this was a time for art, not policy. Barack Obama’s portrait, a masterful bit of photorealism by Robert McCurdy, captured the first biracial African American from Hawaii ever to be president, as a standout amid a background of white space.

And there was Michelle Obama, in a Sharon Sprung portrait, full of life and color, a first lady like never before.

Both Obamas individually portrayed, artfully, and more truthfully than any literal photo, leaving viewers with plenty of room for imagination, appreciation, and inspiration.

A braided Michelle Obama was humbled to see her canvas. “This big, beautiful painting staring back at me,” she said. “I never could have imagined that any of this would-be part of my story.”

But this is the story of America.

“Too often in this country, people feel like they have to look a certain way or act a certain way to fit in,” Michelle Obama said. “That they have to make a lot of money or come from a certain group, or class or faith in order to matter. But what we’re looking at today, a portrait of a biracial kid with an unusual name, and the daughter of a water pump operator and a stay-at-home mom, what we are seeing is a reminder that there’s a place for everyone in this country.”

That’s the takeaway.

The British can have their impotent figureheads, their kings and queens bloodied by history.

In America, we have the power of democracy.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See him on www.amok.com

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