‘The idea of whiteness is over’: Stan Grant on the Queen's death and the different world awaiting Charles

The death of the only monarch the Wiradjuri journalist has ever known prompted a visceral reflection of the pain her office caused, and where we go from here.

With the death of 'the white queen', Stan Grant says her heir is inheriting the role in a vastly different world.

Stan Grant knows this land, down to a bend in the road.

“The reception should come good around this corner,” he yells down the patchy mobile line.

Driving on the road to Bathurst, the Wiradjuri man is on home turf. It’s a familiarity that goes beyond knowing merely landscape, however, and extends into the heart and soul of the nation.

The journalist's searing reflections on the reality of racial inequality in this country are unflinchingly honest. On this subject, there's nothing he hasn't seen and heard.

“But then again, I'm always surprised at my ability to be surprised!” he laughs.

And so it was in September last year when the country’s political and media establishment went into mourning overdrive in response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Grant says he felt “betrayed” by the nation’s reaction: public grief, the shuttering of parliament and wall to wall coverage at his own employer, the ABC.

"When you celebrate or mourn Empire… you are telling us what you truly care about," he told NITV.

“Where were their tears and their mourning for us, for our people, who have suffered under empire and colonisation?

“I don't know that you can mourn the Queen, and tell us that you care about our lives.”

'The Queen is Dead'

Stan Grant reckoned with the country's past, as well as his own, following the queen's death. Source: NITV / NITV

The event and its fallout fuelled Grant’s latest polemic, ‘The Queen is Dead’.

He says the book was written explosively and “in real time”, a record of his own unexpected emotion at the monarch’s passing.

“My initial response was one of anger: anger at what had happened to us," he said.

"Let's not forget the Queen herself never once apologised to us, never once said the word 'sorry' for what the symbol of the Crown inflicted and continues to inflict on our people.

“[Her death] really tore the scab off our history.”

Grant was not alone in his reaction.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around the country noted that the Queen's office was the same one that had sanctioned the invasion of this continent. As a Day of Mourning for the dead monarch was swiftly declared, the lack of action on similar calls made by Indigenous activists for years was condemned.

Grant says these interventions by First Nations people were not welcomed in the broader conversation.

"We were being told 'Now is not the time'," said Grant.

"It's not appropriate to speak of empire, colonisation, racism, genocide. But when is it not the time? Isn't that absolutely the time?"

Whiteness is 'dying a hard death'

As the coronation of King Charles approaches, Grant hopes the event inspires a different response here at home.

"We may get a bit more honesty in the coronation," he told NITV.

"I know at the ABC, there was a lot of kickback against... this obsequious coverage.

"I think people are looking for something a bit more bracing and a bit more challenging."

But Grant says Queen Elizabeth's hereditary heir faces a very different world to the one his mother did. The era she helped define is, similarly, no longer with us.

"I returned to that refrain like a blues song, 'the White Queen is Dead, the White Queen is dead', because she is the personification of that whiteness," he said.

"And I'll say the last white queen because if there is one thing that is sure in our world today, it is that the idea of whiteness is over.

"We're seeing the rise of countries throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia; we talk about a post-American world where the glory days of the white empire are drawing to a close.

"Undoubtedly, whiteness as an organising principle is over. I think the Queen's death really marks that."

These deaths, literal and figurative, prompt as much reflection for Grant on the future as the past. The pointed title of the book, 'The Queen is Dead', seems to have a tacit subheading: so what now?

"I look to my own ancestors and my family to be able to come to this catastrophic history with still love in my heart," he said.

"I don't seek vengeance because... I've reported around the world and I know what comes after vengeance: it's more suffering, more violence, more bloodshed, more hatred."

"By writing about the history in my bones, I'm seeking to speak back to that history with truth, honesty, justice, love, and hopefully, a forgiveness.

"And that's the challenge that the death of the queen sets all of us.

Grant will be appearing at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Saturday, May 13.