For the first six years of my life, I thought my father, and more than a few people in his Black Caribbean Creole family, were white. But when I first went to a predominantly white school, the kids were different from me and my family: how they spoke, how they ate, and most importantly, how they saw the world. That was the end of my thinking that whiteness or blackness had a lot to do with your appearance. The same cannot be said for Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
On Netflix’s six-part docuseries harry and meghan — which is more akin to a high-production home movie due to Prince Harry and Meghan’s full creative control — the former Meghan Markle opens up a bit more about her thoughts on her biracial identity and her experiences with racism. But what she shares hints at a deeper internalized racism and colourism that the Duchess of Sussex has yet to meaningfully address, even as she spreads awareness about the horrific racism she endured at the hands of the British press and the royal family. british.
In Harry and Megan, Meghan claims she was not treated as a black woman, or even as a woman of colour, until she and Harry got engaged. “[It’s] very different to be a minority but not to be treated as a minority from the start. Obviously now, people are very aware of my race because they made it an issue when I went to the UK. But before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ‘black woman.’ So that talk didn’t have to go through me,” Meghan said during the series.
It amazes me to think that she lived 35 years as a distinctly non-white person without ever experiencing racism of any kind. And many multiracial black people who tuned in to watch don’t think so either.
“It seems impossible that a slightly mixed person with known African heritage would have grown up in the 20th century, even in its last quarter, and not have been treated by the broader society as black, even being subjected to racism,” Ben said. Karp, who taught the history of race in the US at Japan’s Temple University and whose mother is black and her father is white.
Stephanie Reist, a Stanford professor and a scholar of race in the Americas, said she was taken aback for a moment in the series when Meghan recalled seeing someone call her mother, Doria Ragland, the N-word. Time Meghan has hinted that it happened more than once.the actress seemed detached from the experience, seeing it as something that happened to her mother, and other black people, but not to her.
“I just couldn’t imagine cutting myself off from my family, from my mother like that,” said Reist, whose mother is African-American and whose father is white and Swiss. She speculated that Meghan seems to need racism to be “hyperpersonal” in order for it to mean much to her.
In one episode, Ragland also said that when she informed her daughter that she was being abused by British tabloids because she was a black woman, Meghan replied: “Mommy, I don’t want to hear that.” Seeing that the Duchess also shared stories of her mother being mistaken for her nanny, Meghan knew that racism was something that happened to women who looked like her mother, but it felt unbearable to think that it was something that could also happen to her. pass to her
Questioning Meghan’s claim that she was never treated as a black woman or a woman of color may seem petty or invalidate her experience, a common dismissal thrown at people who question Meghan’s descriptions of how she was perceived. But it is important to analyze this problem because it helps us to understand the nature of death, especially how it happens today. Meghan presents passing for white, or the fact that “people didn’t know what she was mixed up with,” as a passive act, as something that just happened to her. But while many fair-skinned people have the skill pass, pass as a Act it is intentional
In the series, Meghan and her mother emphasize that Meghan was often mistaken for a white woman, as if this was deeply relevant information. Meghan’s then-agent, Nick Collins, has admitted that it took her a while, she doesn’t remember how long, before learning that she was biracial. Almost all of Meghan’s friends featured in the documentary are white, and apart from her mother, none of Meghan’s black family members appear. Also, after her teens, we never see Meghan’s hair curly or in any other style that is remotely associated with black. In college, Meghan joined a white sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma (she’s been in the news for multiple racist incidents in recent years) and has mostly dated white men.
Despite being raised by a black mother in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, Meghan has effectively been living a white life, surrounded by white friends, romantic partners, and people who didn’t know she was biracial. We see passing as the things that are shown in imitation of life or in the Brit Bennett novel the fading half, where the person flees from his previous life in search of a better future. But today, passing does not require complicated lies. It can involve more subtle actions, such as minimizing one’s blackness, immersing oneself in white worlds, and omitting mentions of one’s race until unavoidable.
My grandmother, who was born with blonde hair and blue-green eyes, comes across as white to many people. When I asked her if she considered that a passing thing, she said absolutely not. “To pass would be if she didn’t correct them right away or if she didn’t live the life of a black woman,” she said. “People who are wrong about me is not that I pass.”
In the docuseries, Meghan wants us to believe that she was naive about racism and that the UK was a brutal wake-up call. This feels only half true. The United Kingdom was a brutal call to action, not to the realities of racism, but to the fact that being biracial (and not identifying as black) did not protect her from the intense anti-blackness she experienced. But by her own admission, she was not unfamiliar with the racial dynamics in the US. She lived through the Los Angeles uprising of 1992, watched her mother get racial slurs, and heard stories of her grandfather’s experiences navigating the towns. of the sunset
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Meghan knew racism existed, she just felt at a comfortable distance from it because of the way he looked. She felt so comfortable that she thought she could marry into the British royal family, an institution built on the corpses of colonized and enslaved blacks and browns, and be accepted. While I’m skeptical, her involvement with the royal family was the first time she experienced racism or anti-blackness, probably was the first time she found herself unable to ignore it, or take comfort in the knowledge that darker-skinned people had it worse.
And while Meghan claims that “we don’t really talk about what it’s like to be biracial,” she fails to acknowledge that her own discussion of biracialism is alienating and even offensive to many biracial people. Her assertion that both blacks and whites are trying to “force her to choose between two worlds” are not serious thoughts because they claim that blacks and whites are nearly equal in power. So of course people will criticize someone who is clinging to power. But somehow Karp sympathizes and understands why Meghan seems to feel this way.
“The decline of the ‘one drop rule,’ even in the black community, has meant that many of us who have a black identity but are considered passable or ‘adjacent white’ preempt hurtful rejection by never claiming full belonging. . [with Black people],” he said. “This bubble can be a kind of safe space. For many of us it’s easier to accept a bit of self-delusion than to deal with such primal exclusion.”
But Meghan’s comments on biracialism go beyond fear of exclusion. In 2012, she participated in an anti-racism public service announcement and shared her growing up experience. Towards the end of the video, she added this tidbit: “Having a mixed world is what it’s all about, it makes it so much more beautiful and interesting.” The idea that miscegenation is more beautiful has its roots in colorism and anti-blackness (the popular phrase “improve the roota” or “improve the race” is one of the best-known examples of this destructive thinking) and many biracial and multiracial blacks recoiled from the idea.
Vina Smith-Ramakrishnan, whose mother is Tamil and whose father is African-American, said: “The ‘mixed world’ comment made me feel weird. I get the general feeling that she really believes that being completely black or even associated with blackness is inherently worse than being mixed. It seems to me like an active lifestyle choice that she has made to identify as biracial but just lean towards whiteness.”
Meghan once said she thought the UK would accept her because people in the Commonwealth “looked like her”. It’s a deeply problematic statement that points to her awareness of her light-skinned privilege (and willingness to reap those benefits), while also hinting at a lack of concern for people who don’t have that ability to even to think the royal family would accept them in the first place. “I’m not light-skinned by South Asian or black standards,” Smith-Ramakrishnan said. “So a lot of the ‘privileges’ that come with being biracial for other people, they don’t benefit me.”
In fairness to Meghan, she wants to shine a light on issues of racism. The docuseries mentions the work she and Harry are doing with the NAACP, her previous advocacy for the victims of the UK’s Grenfell fire, and her claim that the lives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor mattered. But in addition to speaking out against racism, Meghan must also examine the colorism that she has apparently internalized. And she needs to explore how her comments hurt black people, especially when this conversation about race, blackness, and colorism is happening globally.
“I could sympathize with what he was saying,” said Allison Dunne, who is Lebanese and black. “However, there are much better ways to do this, and if you are going to take these big jobs at the UN [and making Netflix documentaries] she should know how to contribute to this complicated discussion without denying her blackness.”
At a point in harry and mehgan, a little dark-skinned black girl expresses her hope that Meghan and Prince Harry’s marriage will result in less racism in Britain. “I think it will make a little difference because some people are really racist to other people because of their color,” the girl says. “Maybe it will change their minds.”
Unfortunately, we know it hasn’t. But the Sussexes now have control over their own narrative. Still, that control doesn’t come without responsibility. Lamenting the fact that she was “robbed” of the benefits of colorism and finally experiencing the sting of racism like countless Black women before her instead of educating herself on how she participated in a colorist system, Meghan’s new revelation is quite empty. If she really wants to help change things, Meghan will first have to reconnect with the people she distanced herself from in the first place.
