THE ROYAL FAMILY’S DIRTY LAUNDRY MOMENT: MEGHAN, HARRY, OPRAH, AND RACE

 

Ordinarily, we wouldn’t post about an Oprah Winfrey interview with British royals.  We concern

ourselves, though, with issues that reflect what’s happening in society and that people care about. Seventeen million viewers watched the recent CBS interview, American television’s second largest non-sporting event audience this year. Eleven million people in the United Kingdom saw the interview.  So, Winfrey’s interview

with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, caught our attention. The interview left the royal family with tough questions that deserve answers. Buckingham Palace put out a statement a few days later saying the royal family would address the issues the interview raised “privately.”  The interview left many disappointed and feeling the western world lost another opportunity for putting racial animus behind us.

Markle, the mixed race American actress who married Harry in a storybook wedding in May 2018, told Winfrey life as an active royal made her

contemplate suicide. She said she reached out for help with her mental distress but was told she shouldn’t expect assistance. She said royal family members didn’t want her then unborn son holding a title or having the security arrangements royals typically receive. Unidentified family members expressed “concerns” about how dark his skin might be. Markle and her husband wouldn’t say who raised the “concerns,” though

Harry denied it was either of his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II or her husband, the ailing Prince Philip. Rampant speculation about who it was consumed the British and American media.

The UK and the One Drop Rule

From the time Harry and Meghan began dating in

2016, British tabloids were fascinated (repulsed?) by the idea of an English royal involved in a romance with a person of color. Some weren’t nice about it. Meghan almost certainly carries more white than black ancestry. Her father, Thomas

Markle, is a white man. The world views her mother, Doria Ragland, as black, though her skin tone and other features suggest some European ancestry. Meghan, therefore, in the eyes of many, is black because of the “one drop rule.”

In order to prevent the offspring of enslaved women and white masters from claiming inheritance rights through their biological fathers, 

many American states enforced two provisions in probate and family law.  First, children carried the racial status of their mothers. Second, the presence of any black ancestry made a person legally black – the one drop rule.

England never had such laws, but the custom apparently followed Meghan into her relationship with Harry. Seemingly that view held sway with some members of the royal family who weren’t hesitant about expressing themselves.

Meghan’s distress has now caused all kinds ofproblems. The British Commonwealth includes nations with lots of people of color. Many embraced Meghan. For them, the royal family’s behavior has been a supreme disappointment and bolstered the push in some countries for ending ties with the monarchy.

 

Is This Really Happening?

“Concern” about the skin color of a royal family member’s child in the 21^st century indicates the world hasn’t changed as much as we might have hoped. It may mean Britain has racial problems not much different from those in the United States. The controversy suggests Meghan and Harry’s marriage now represents a lost opportunity.

Interracial marriage isn’t unusual anymore. The statistics tell a clear enough story. Rates of intermarriage among blacks in the

United States doubled between 1980 and 2010 and keep rising. Beyond the numbers, just watch television or shop in a bookstore. Interracial couples and their children appear in commercials for banks, food products, cars, skin disease treatments, furniture, even erectile dysfunction medications. Novels about interracial romances flood bookstore shelves.

Perhaps the idea of a British royal in an interracial marriage was too much, despite changing attitudes. As a friend of one of us says about the royal family and its notions of what’s acceptable and what’s not, the royals follow a rule that says, “That’s different!”

 

A Missed Opportunity

When Meghan and Harry wed, we took note of the

inclusivity and cultural diversity their marriage ceremony put on display. We titled our post, “Not Your Grandfather’s Royal Wedding.”  A black American cleric, Bishop Michael Curry, offered the homily. A mostly black singing group, the

                                       

Kingdom Choir, and a black cellist, Sheku Kanneh-

Mason, provided the featured music. We thought the inclusivity of the wedding portended a more tolerant era, one that could help England and the everyone else put racial animus further in the rear-view mirror.

The mistreatment Meghan received, behavior that led her and Harry to flee the United Kingdom for

California and life outside the royal  bubble, suggests the bright promise of a new world we saw was an illusion. Things haven’t changed as we thought. The British have their own version of the racial insensitivity and backward thinking we see so much of in the United States.

Perhaps there’s no reason for surprise. We wondered how that 2018 ceremony struck some members of the royal family. One of us got a text from a relative wondering if the wedding “stretched British stiff upper lips to their snapping point.”  Now it appears those fears may have been realized. Perhaps the way the wedding --- and the marriage itself – struck some royals was a version of the idea another of our friends expresses when he sees white people unhappy about some indicator of racial progress. He exclaims, “We can’t have that!”