HARRY & MEGHAN
Now couple accuse Britain of ‘structural racism’
THE Duke and Duchess of Sussex yesterday launched an extraordinary attack on ‘structural racism’ in Britain.
Sixth-in-line to the throne Harry lamented a ‘world created by white people for white people’ and revealed his ‘awakening’ to race issues after meeting his wife Meghan.
Speaking from the couple’s £11million nine-bedroom, 16-bathroom mansion in Santa Barbara, California, the prince said the UK could be a better country if white people understood more about life for those ‘of a different coloured skin’.
He added that although London was celebrated as one of the world’s most diverse cities, ‘if you actually get out on the streets and you actually talk to people... it doesn’t feel as diverse as it actually is’.
Meanwhile, Meghan praised Black Lives Matter demonstrations in America as ‘a beautiful thing’ – but said this only applied to ‘peaceful protest’ and admitted many found them ‘inflammatory’.
The couple’s latest foray into politics comes a week after their high-profile intervention in the US election by urging voters to ‘reject hate speech’ in comments which broke royal protocol and were widely interpreted as a call to vote out Donald Trump.
But critics branded them ‘monstrously narcissistic and completely ignorant’.
Harry and Meghan gave a rare joint interview to London’s Evening Standard newspaper, via a Zoom video call from California, to mark the start of Black History Month.
They have put forward 20 ‘ trailblazers’, nominated by leading British BAME figures including Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams and Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo.
They included Scotland Yard police commander Dr Alison Heydari, nominated by Met chief Neil Basu, and Dr Nicola Rollock, an education expert nominated by Baroness Doreen Lawrence. Harry hailed them as ‘people that are really, genuinely making a difference’. Meghan added: ‘I didn’t realise that there was a Black History Month in Britain, and so to have that brought to our attention was really exciting.’
But they warned that young people of colour in Britain will be held back ‘as long as structural racism exists’. In an article they wrote for the paper, they said: ‘If you are white and British, the world you see often looks just like you – on TV, in media, in the role models celebrated across our nation.
‘That is not a criticism, it’s reality. Many recognise this, but others are not aware of the effect this has on our own perspective, our own bias, but also the effect it has on young people of colour.’
Harry, 36, said he had become more aware of the issue of racism after marrying Meghan. He said: ‘For me, it’s awareness and it’s education and it’s teaching. You know, I’ve had a sort of an awakening as such of my own, because I wasn’t aware of so many of the issues and so many of the problems within the UK, but also globally as well. I thought I did, but I didn’t.’
He added: ‘You know, when you go into a shop with your children and you only see white dolls, do you even think, “That’s weird, there is not a black doll there?”
‘And I use that as just one example of where we as white people don’t always have the awareness of what it must be like for someone else of a different coloured skin, of a black skin, to be in the same situation as we are where the world that we know has been created by white people for white people.’
The couple were asked about Black Lives Matter, which gained traction around the world after George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May. Meghan said it was ‘a different movement’ in the US. She said: ‘What has been inflammatory for a lot of people is when any version of the community becomes disruptive.’
But she added: ‘When there’s just peaceful protests and when there’s the intention of just wanting unity and just wanting recognition of equality, then that is a beautiful thing, actually.’
The duchess, 39, also said they were ‘doing well’ after a tumultu
‘Social justice, Beverly Hills-style’
ous year that saw them step down as senior royals and quit Britain.
She said of their 17-month- old son Archie: ‘We are very lucky with our little one. He is just so busy, he is all over the place. He keeps us on our toes.’
Former Downing Street adviser Nick Timothy wrote on Twitter that the couple were ‘the perfect spokespersons for the uber-woke’.
He added: ‘Fantastically rich, monstrously narcissistic, completely ignorant of the meaning of the lines they parrot and the people and countries they denigrate. Social justice, Beverly Hills-style.’
Ex-minister and royal author Norman Baker said: ‘The country has come a long way in 20 years. I would have thought it far more a problem in the United States where he now lives.
‘I don’t know when Harry last walked the streets of London, but when I last walked the streets of London it seemed pretty racially diverse to me.’