We need everyone on the planet to join war on racism, says Harry
Prince ‘led by Meghan’ on road to wokeness
‘The problems are already too big’
PRINCE Harry has issued a call for ‘every single person on the planet’ to help tackle the problem of racism.
In an impassioned interview, the UK royal said action was needed now to help end systemic racism.
While charity was crucial in trying to help fix the problems, he said, the issues were now ‘too big’, meaning it was effectively the same as ‘bringing a bucket of water to a forest fire’. Harry, 35, now living with wife Meghan, 38, and son Archie, one, in a €17million Los Angeles mansion, made the comments in an interview with civil rights leader Rashad Robinson about how people can use ‘their privilege for change’.
Mr Robinson, president of the USbased Color Of Change initiative, called for people to ‘drive action toward structural and systemic change’ and an end to the ‘rules that have held people back’.
Harry replied: ‘You say this so beautifully Rashad, and it’s so true.
‘There is so much that has happened for so long that once those problems exist – charity is crucial in so many areas but it can’t fix the problem, the problems already exist by that point, the problems are already too big and, as I have said to you before, it is basically like bringing a bucket of water to a forest fire.
‘So we have to go to the root of the problem, to the source of the problem and fix it there and, as we have discussed before, it is going to take every single one of us – this is not down to the black community; this is down to every single person that is on the planet right now.’
Harry, who in 2009 was forced to apologise after using a racist term to describe a fellow military recruit, said that people should ‘act rather than just say, “Oh I am going to do this, I am going to do that” – you have said it, now you have to follow through with it’.
In the interview, which was previewed on Instagram before being released on YouTube, the pair also discuss online hate and what social media companies should do to protect their users.
Harry described social media as ‘an addiction you can’t get away from’ which had been ‘weaponised to promote hate, racism and bigotry’. He said: ‘Online hate speech is without a question part of our onward mission. This has gone beyond a problem; it is now a global crisis.’
His comments come as the writers of a controversial biography of Harry and Meghan say she guided him on a ‘journey to wokeness’.
Omid Scobie, co-author with Carolyn Durand of Finding Freedom, which is out today, told National Public Radio in the US: ‘Harry’s journey to wokeness has been very public. We’ve seen him educating himself along the way, but this experience of witnessing Meghan receiving racist remarks and commentary would have been the first time he’d seen someone he was particularly close to affected by it.’