‘Woke’ Harry ready to open up about racist gaffes of his past
PRINCE Harry is preparing to talk about his “journey” to becoming socially aware after making a series of racist gaffes in the past.
These include him being photographed wearing a Nazi fancy-dress costume and calling an Army friend a “P***”.
Omid Scobie, the co-author behind the pro-Harry and Meghan book Finding Freedom, released last week, says the Duke of Sussex wants to come clean.
“He’s on a journey at the moment and I do think that at some point we’ll hear him talk about that journey,” Mr Scobie said on True Royalty TV.
“But I think at the moment he’s still educating himself. Maybe he feels he’s not there yet.”
In footage recorded in 2006, but revealed three years later by a Sunday newspaper, Harry – then a 24-year-old soldier – is behind the camera and can be heard making a mock commentary.
As he zooms onto the face of an Asian officer cadet while waiting at an airport to fly to Cyprus, Harry says: “Anyone else here, ah, our little P*** friend Ahmed.” The soldier in question was his fellow Sandhurst trainee Ahmed Raza Khan, who went on to be a captain in the Pakistani army.
The royal was also shown telling another officer cadet wearing a camouflage veil during a night manoeuvre in Cyprus, “You look like a raghead”.
Mr Khan later said there were “no hard feelings” with Harry, but his father Mohammad Yaqoob Khan Abassi, a retired vicepresident of a leading Pakistani bank, said : “I was very surprised. I profoundly condemn it.”
A Palace spokesman at the time said there had been no racist intent in Harry’s words.
“Prince Harry fully understands how offensive this term can be, and is extremely sorry for any offence his words might cause,” he added.
“There is no question that Prince Harry was in any way seeking to insult his friend.”
The spokesman also said Harry had used “raghead” to mean a Taliban or Iraqi insurgent.
Harry was ordered to attend an equality and diversity course by Army chiefs after being formally disciplined for his remarks.
A month later in February 2009, British comedian Stephen K Amos revealed in a television interview Harry told him: “You don’t sound like a black chap.” Londoner Amos said: “I wanted to say – in a West Indian accent – ‘How am I supposed to sound?”’ At the time Amos said he hoped the comment was in jest and thought it might have been an attempt at banter.
The Prince had previously been forced to issue an apology for causing an international outcry when he was pictured wearing a German Afrika Korps uniform complete with a swastika armband back in 2005.
He wore the controversial costume to a friend’s “colonials and natives” party in Wiltshire.
He said afterwards: “I am very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone.
“It was a poor choice of costume and I apologise.”
Mr Scobie has spent two years crafting the glowing biography, labelled “one big moanathon” by critics last week. He said Harry’s “journey to wokeness” came after seeing first-hand racist attacks on his wife Meghan.
He said: “Harry’s journey to wokeness has been very public.
“We’ve seen him learning and educating himself along the way.
“But this experience of witnessing Meghan face racist remarks and commentary would have been the first time he’d seen someone in his life, or someone he was particularly close to, affected by it in a certain way.”
In an interview with American civil rights activist Rashad Robinson last week, Harry insisted it would take “every single person on the planet” to defeat racism.
And last month, he and Meghan said the British Commonwealth “must acknowledge the past” even if it is “uncomfortable”.