Questions of UK racism surfacing amid royal rift
LONDON — When American actress Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in 2018, she was hailed as a breath of fresh air for Britain’s royal family. That honeymoon didn’t last.
Now the couple wants independence, saying the pressure of life as full-time royals is unbearable. And a debate is raging: Did racism drive Meghan away?
When Prince Harry, who is sixth in line to the throne, began dating the “Suits” actress — daughter of a white father and African American mother — the media called it a sign that Britain had entered a “post-racial” era in which skin color and background no longer mattered, even to the royal family.
U.K. Labour Party lawmaker Clive Lewis, who like Meghan has biracial heritage, says the royal rift shows that Britain still has a problem with “structural racism.”
“We can see it with Meghan Markle and the way that she’s been treated in the media, we know that this is a reality of the 21st century, still,” Lewis told Sky News. “After 400 years of racism you can’t just overturn it overnight.”
From the start, some in the media wrote about Meghan using racially loaded terms. One tabloid columnist referred to her “exotic” DNA. A TV host described her as “uppity.”
Meghan was criticized for everything from eating avocados — which the Daily Mail claimed fuel “human rights abuses, drought and murder” — to wearing dark nail polish, apparently an etiquette faux pas.
Morgan Jerkins, a senior editor at Zora, a Medium.com site for women of color, said that because
Meghan was “an outsider, culturally, racially and socioeconomically, she has been the royal family’s scapegoat.”
Others point out that Meghan is hardly the first royal to get a rough ride in the media. The media and the royal family have an intense and often toxic relationship going back decades. Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was snapped by paparazzi wherever she went. When she and Prince Charles admitted that their marriage was in trouble, her private life became public property.
Diana was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 while being pursued by photographers. Prince Harry, who was 12 when his mother died, said in October he feared “history repeating itself.”
After Diana’s death, the media left young William and Harry alone in exchange for staged interviews and photo opportunities as they grew up. That practice has continued with the three children of William and his wife, Kate.
Younger female royals are routinely judged on appearance, demeanor and habits.
Still, Meghan’s treatment has sometimes seemed harsher.
Last year the Daily Mail ran photos of a pregnant
Meghan cradling her bump under the headline: “Why can’t Meghan Markle keep her hands off her bump?” Months earlier the same paper had described a pregnant Kate as “tenderly” cradling her bump.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel denied Meghan has suffered from racist media coverage,
“I’m not in that category at all where I believe there’s racism at all,” Patel, who is of Indian heritage and whose parents emigrated to Britain from Uganda, told the BBC. “I think we live in a great country, a great society, full of opportunity, where people of any background can get on in life.”
But others say the media double standard Meghan faced is evidence that talk of “post-racial” Britain is premature.
“Her treatment has proved what many of us have always known: No matter how beautiful you are, whom you marry, what palaces you occupy, charities you support, how faithful you are, how much money you accumulate or what good deeds you perform, in this society racism will still follow you,” writer Afua Hirsch, author of the book “Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging,” wrote in The New York Times.