What We Can Learn from Meghan Markle: Race, Motherhood, and Love

In the midst of Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle, she asked her, “Were you silent or were you silenced?” which is a question that we all can reflect about in reference to our own lives. This silence that Oprah questioned was directly connected to Meghan being new to the royal family and being a black woman in a sea of whiteness. The degree to which she was scrutinized, ridiculed, and disregarded was so extreme that she mentioned being scared of being alone due to not knowing what she would do to herself. While this interview has put the royal family under the microscope, particularly with the question of racism looming over them, we can not allow the examination of them to overshadow what we can all learn from Meghan’s perseverance and resiliency in such a restricting space.

Watching a fare skinned woman such as Meghan who could easily pass for white as Clare Kendry does in the novel, Passing by Nella Larsen seems to echo the one drop rule which caused her to endure blatant and passive racism as a member of the royal family. The one drop rule was prevalent throughout the South as a method to determine one’s race with the general idea being if a person had one drop (or one ancestor) of African descent then they were automatically considered black. The royal family’s issue with Meghan’s blackness can arguably be connected to the idea that her becoming royal would mean that the family would no longer be purely English nor purely white. Additionally, just like America, Britain also participated in the slave trade which fueled not just its economy but also the general wealth of many families. To be more specific, in the 1760s Britain used its ships to transfer nearly 40,000 slaves. While it can be observed that Britain has tried to do an erasure of their history of slavery; we cannot glance over the fact that just as all black people, Meghan is also a descent of slaves. So could the issue of race really be an issue of an individual who has African ancestors carrying her history from that of property to royalty? Many tend to assert that slavery was so long ago which is indeed true but we have to also recognize that the remnants of it exists across the world.

In Meghan’s interview with Oprah, she admittedly stated that she had no idea what to expect as a senior royal with the constant pressures of being “on” and her life literally being controlled with her once going a period of 4 months without leaving the house. While her autonomy was being stripped from her with incidences such as not being able to go to lunch with friends and having to neglect her career as an actress. The identity of her son, Archie, was also being inspected prior to him even leaving his mother’s womb. Meghan noted that there were inquiries about how dark her son’s skin was going to be from the royals as well as being quite bluntly told that there would be no security for him even though the other grandchildren of the same status as him maintain security. Black women have historically been unprotected and this lack of protection extended to Meghan’s son despite him being the son of a prince. Meghan asserted, “The most important title that I’ll ever have is mom” and one can guess that the termination of security for her son could have been the fine straw that pushed her and Prince Harry to step away from their duties as royals.

Outside of the topics of motherhood and race that were threaded throughout the interview, the love that Meghan and Prince Harry have for one another was beaming. In Meghan’s reflections in marrying a prince she compares her love story to that of the Little Mermaid who lost her voice but eventually gained it back. She described her love story as “…greater than any fairytale you ever read.” Prince Harry then commented that if it had not been for her and how she opened his eyes to the harshness and realties to the world and country that that he called home that he would have not left the kingdom. One can easily see that Prince Harry not only respects Meghan but sees it as his duty to protect her, even if it meant reframing a new life in Los Angelos and losing the luxuries and privileges that he was guaranteed as a prince.

As children the majority of us were told stories that consisted of a prince coming and saving the damsel in distress and these stories always ended with the prince and newly appointed princess living happily ever after in their kingdom. Through Meghan and Harry we see that their fairytale crossed racial and societal boundaries and how sometimes the princess saves the prince.