Being direct doesn’t make you difficult, says Meghan
HER time at Kensington Palace saw her dubbed ‘Duchess Difficult’ and even accused of bullying staff.
But the Duchess of Sussex set out a different vision of herself yesterday, saying she often found herself ‘cowering and tiptoeing’ on entering a room.
She had to remind herself to be assertive, she said.
Meghan, 41, was discussing the negative stereotype of the ‘angry black woman’ in the latest episode of her Spotify podcast.
She revealed that recent genealogy tests had found her ancestry was 43 per cent Nigerian, and said she wanted to ‘dig deeper’ into the results. And she spoke of her frustration with the ‘tired old stereotypes’ about black women, and the impact of racist tropes on society.
The Duchess of Sussex described how her concerns over how she was perceived continued to affect her behaviour, because she did not want to be seen as difficult or demanding.
She said: ‘I will find myself cowering and tiptoeing into a room... And you’re like “Oh my God, stop. Stop whispering and tiptoeing around it, just say what it is that you need”. You’re allowed to set a boundary. You’re allowed to be clear. It does not make you demanding, it does not make you difficult, it makes you clear.’
Meghan said anger was not ‘a gender or racially specific feeling’ and that people should have an opportunity to ‘be direct without being called angry, to exist on our own terms, to just be, to just be human’. The duchess said she was ‘particular’ but insisted it was only because she wanted her endeavours to be ‘a shared success for everybody’.
She made no reference to the bullying allegations against her, which she has always denied. In October 2018, it was claimed she drove out two personal assistants and undermined the confidence of a third staff member at Kensington Palace.
Buckingham Palace said it would investigate, but the findings were not made public. Her team described the allegations as a ‘calculated smear campaign’.
In the latest episode of her podcast, Meghan told NigerianAmerican comedian Ziwe Fumudoh that genealogy tests had found her ancestry was 43 per cent Nigerian. Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland is African-American and her father Thomas Markle is of Dutch-Irish descent.
‘You’re allowed to be clear’