People make racist jokes in front of me, says Meghan
Prince Harry’S girlfriend has told how she feels compelled to speak out about racism after being subjected to years of prejudice by people unaware of her heritage.
Meghan Markle — whose yoga teacher mother, Doria ragland, is black and father, Thomas Markle, is white — claimed some who believed she was caucasian made distasteful ‘black jokes’ in front of her.
in an interview with Pride, a British lifestyle magazine targeting black British, mixed race, african and african-caribbean women, she said: ‘it makes me think of the countless black jokes people have shared in front of me, not realising i am mixed. i think i feel an obligation now to talk about discrimination . . . or even to talk about the fact that most people can’t tell that i’m half black.
‘The sort of conversation that i hear, that once they realise i’m mixed they’re like: “Oh sorry!” Because i’ve just been this ethnically ambiguous fly on the wall listening to everything that you’re saying that you wouldn’t have comfortably said had you known that i was black, so i don’t care if i’m fairskinned and i don’t care what it is, that’s who i am, that’s my family.’
The star of popular U.S. television legal drama Suits is celebrating her 36th birthday with the Queen’s grandson in Botswana on a romantic african safari.
Harry is said to be ‘blown away’ by Markle’s political and philanthropic activism, something she tackles in her interview with Pride. She says: ‘My hope for the world is to get to a place where it’s colour blind.’ as the glamorous rachel Zane in Suits, the actress revealed she has had to ‘fight’ against being made to wear a towel in ‘every scene’ and said that the show’s producers still don’t want her to wear her hair up as her character is meant to be the show’s ‘dream girl’.
She said of her stance: ‘it’s really about speaking up. When you have more women in the power positions, the decision-making positions, as producers or anything else, then what you’re seeing on screen is reflecting that.’
as for her visit to africa with Harry, it is understood the couple are heading to Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where the Prince has many friends.
a source said: ‘Harry is more at home in africa than anywhere else in the world. He has wanted to show her that side of him for some time. Meghan has also spent time on the continent and loved it.’
The couple are accompanied by a small team of taxpayer-funded police bodyguards and it is believed they will spend up to three weeks in the region.
‘I hope the world will become colour-blind’