Sunny Hostin on Queen Elizabeth II's Death: 'We Can Mourn the Queen and Not the Empire'

Mar. 15, 2025

Sunny Hostinis sharing her feelings following the death ofQueen Elizabeth IIand Her Majesty’s connection to British colonialism.

During Friday’s installment ofThe View, co-host Hostin, 53, spoke on the history of the monarchy one day afterthe Queen’s deathat age 96.

“We can mourn the queen and not the empire,” said Hostin, who noted that she lived in London “for a while” as a student. “Because if you really think about what the monarchy was built on, it was built on the backs of Black and brown people.”

She added thatQueen Elizabeth"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."

Chris Jackson/Getty

Hostin pointed out that Barbados parted ways with the Queen last year when itbecame a republicand that Jamaica islikely to follow suit.

For more on Queen Elizabeth, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

“It’s time for [King Charles III] to modernize this monarchy,” Hostin said. “It’s time for him to provide reparations to all of those colonies. A monarchy — it’s very easy to uplift one family — the harder thing is to uplift all families. I think that he’s in a position to be able to do that.”

Co-hostJoy Beharthen mentioned that, during her reign,Queen Elizabethcondemned apartheid in South Africa.

Apartheid — which began in 1948 after the election of the National Party — was “a system of legislation that upheld segregationist policies against non-white citizens of South Africa,” according toHistory.com.

Hostin responded, “That was one of the good things she did.”

“She also was very angry when [former Prime Minister of the U.K. Margaret] Thatcher refused to do sanctions against South Africa,” Behar continued. “So she tried her best that she could. She really didn’t have that much power. She was a figurehead.”

Co-host Ana Navarro chimed in and said institutions like the United States and the Catholic Church were “built on the backs of Black and brown people.”

Along with Hostin, political analyst Richard Stengel — who served as under secretary of state in the Obama administration — questioned during asegmenton MSNBC Thursday why U.S. press coverage was mostly ignoring Her Majesty’s ties to colonialism.

During her 70-year reign,Queen Elizabethserved as head of state to 32 countries. South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1961.

“You played a clip of her speaking in Cape Town in 1947, in South Africa. That’s the year apartheid took effect in South Africa. That was something British colonialism ushered in,” Stengel explained in part. “British colonialism, which she presided over, had a terrible effect on much of the world.”

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

QueenElizabeth died Thursday afternoonat Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

But the loss was most profound for her large family, including her four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

source: people.com