t h e roya l fa m i ly r e vo l u t i o n a ry
The first bi-racial woman to join the royal family has fundamentally changed the British landscape, says writer Afua Hirsch
it’s hard to find much that is positive to say about the atmosphere of 2018 Britain, as far as identity is concerned. Competing visions of who we are, what we stand for and who gets to be included have rarely been more antagonistic.
But in May – remember May? – there was an interlude of glorious sunshine, a ray of light interrupting the clouds, a moment of symbolism that touched many people deeply.
The fact that I was among them – standing in the grounds of Windsor Castle, commenting on a royal wedding and what it means – was itself evidence of the fact that, this year, the royal family changed.
Growing up, I was little interested in the royals. As a mixed-race girl of English, Jewish- German and Ghanaian heritage, they had little to offer my sense of identity. I respected the fact that people feel sentimental about them – the importance of symbols of belonging is something I intuitively understand. But here was a family that had led the imperial destruction of such symbols in my Ghanaian family’s past, and whose whiteness only served to remind me that I wasn’t sure if someone with my background could ever really be British. If there was a belief prevalent in our society that Britishness was an exclusively white identity, the royal family was that belief personified.
Then Meghan Markle entered the fray. Here was a woman who is biracial, like me; with African heritage, like me; with a black mother she is close to, like I am to mine. And who – as has not been the tendency for the few high-profile black British people who have reached such visible positions – actually talks about her racial identity. She was entering a space that has been both traditional in its whiteness and white in its traditions, just as people of colour like me often enter exclusively white spaces when we work or interact with the British establishment. For the first time, there was a royal I could intimately relate to.
That was gratifying for me but, for Britain as a whole, it was crucial. Harry and Meghan’s wedding, with all the celebration of black music, talent and spirituality they chose in their service, woke Britain up to the rich histories and cultures that have already been in our midst, unappreciated, sidelined and often unloved.
The press honeymoon that surrounded this irresistible love story may be drawing to a close with the darkening winter days. The newspapers have – in that other most British of traditions – begun dining out on Meghan’s supposed rifts and princess-like behaviour (that somehow seems a less outrageous accusation of someone married to a prince).
But such speculation is business as usual for the British royals. And it’s this – the fact that our mixed-race duchess has become part of the ordinary – that is in fact the biggest change of all.