I listened as did millions in the United Kingdom, this country and around the world to Oprah's interview of Meghan and Harry who tell their sad saga centering around Meghan's racist experience within the UK's royal family after her marriage to Prince Harry, the second son of Charles and Diana. Entering a family through marriage whether the marriage is royal or otherwise is supposed to mean acceptance into another family's circle of safety and hope for the continuance of the familial line through expected progeny and the utterance of solemn vows. It is at one time serious, solemn, and grave but it is also a happy, hopeful and joyous occasion. It is supposed to mean protection, it is supposed to mean a feeling of added safety and security extending one's arms from one family circle into the arms of another especially so within the British royal system.
It meant none of those things to Meghan or, for that matter, neither to the man she was marrying and why was that? Meghan Markle's mother is Black and her father white. What it did mean to Meghan and to Harry, too, was rejection, the pulling of a royal title and the offering of zero security in an oftentimes hostile environment and world filled with death threats to them. This smart, beautiful, articulate and courageous woman, Meghan Markle, had the unmitigated gall to expect this powerful royal court called "the firm" or "the institution" would protect and defend her against the vicious lies promulgated by the even more vicious UK tabloids pitting the part Black Meghan against the all white future queen, Kate Middleton. Questions regarding the lie of who made whom cry and what the color of Meghan and Harry's first child, Archie, would be upon entering this world of pomp, circumstance and rigid class structure had to be humiliating for Meghan and Harry to endure. Meghan's trial by fire taught her that this royal family would do nothing to protect the part Black Meghan from the vicious gossip and lies of an out-of-control British tabloid press in this milieu of mendacity but everything to protect the all white Kate.
Surrounding this whole saga, of course, is the thorny question of the impact of race in a too familiar racist world. The problem for this royal institution is the all too familiar refrain of one drop of Black blood and its impact on the pollution in the royal's eyes of its generational lineage. What would the color of Meghan and Harry's child be? The "firm" actually had the temerity to ask this question in this vortex of incredulity. That along with the refusal to provide security and help for lives at risk probably were the straws that broke their backs. Charles, Harry's father, and heir to the throne refused to take his son's calls if one can believe that a father would not care for the security of his own son, Meghan and Harry left for more secure pastures.
Meghan felt so besieged by a hostile press, its lies and by her uncaring royal family that a severe suicidal depression set in. When she asked for help none would be provided. Why? She was told it would not look good. To hell if Meghan actually killed herself at least the royal reputation would not be soiled. But it is soiled and perhaps, irredeemably so as the history of British colonialism looms large. The Commonwealth of the UK is, as a result, quite ethnically diverse and many will identify with and see Meghan as the victim. We in the US surely know the stranglehold of racism in a thousand different ways. It is, after all, sadly, a metastasizing cancer still institutionally infecting us too.
I suspect we have surely not heard the end of this inconvenient truth the ramifications of which will stretch far and wide. Meghan and Harry have been much sinned against but I have never heard a more articulate, poised and convincing interview revealing the whole sorry saga. Kudos to Meghan and Harry who had the courage to tell their difficult story to Oprah whose professionalism always shows.
