What the Oprah interview told me
The Truth about Harry …
Having finally watched the interview (after first saying I wouldn’t), I have to say it was a little more entertaining than I had expected.
To be honest, this whole Harry Meghan affair started out as a singularly uninteresting thing for me.
Nothing more than a family conflict. A high-profile family, but a family affair nonetheless. There was nothing here of general importance. Or so I thought.
Then people started talking about ‘institutional’ racism. Black people started ‘calling out’ the monarchy in support of Meghan — In particular I watched three shrill ‘angry women’ on Sky screaming racism and railing against the monarchy — then it got interesting to me.
The three women on sky were black. Of Nigerian descent in fact. Why is this relevant? Well because if I was white apparently I wouldn’t be able to comment on this. But I’m black, and also of Nigerian descent so … I’m playing my black privilege card.
The first thing that struck me about these women — who were black and clearly very angry — is that they do not speak for me. In fact I’m not sure they speak for many black people at all. And if they do they speak, they speak with the dusty old voice of the race hustler. They scream about racism in utter outrage. As if it only just cropped up yesterday and they are trying to do away with it immediately.
Their voices are really out of step with a large section of the black world for whom racism is a reality, an accepted and experienced reality such that it is only right that Meghan Markle partake in the experience. The black experience. It is her birthright. Her undeniable heritage. She can call herself ‘mixed’ all she wants but the concept of racism has bestowed her with her true identity. Black.
How ironic that she sought to run from her blackness, using words like ‘mixed’ — most black people, especially in the united states are mixed even the dark skinned ones. Snoop dogg for example is only 71% black — adopting and marrying into the highest echelons of ‘white’ before now seeking refuge in that same blackness. Of course the black mob are happy to receive her back. The prodigal daughter has returned. No more ‘mixed’ but now fully enjoying the ‘black experience’, she ought to relish it! Play that race card for all it is worth; Lord knows that’s what the angry black women on sky were doing. But that card is mostly played out.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying racism has not played a part in the Meghan and Harry story. I’m simply saying ‘so what’? The potential for discrimination is part and parcel of being black.
Let me put it another way — If people stopped being ‘racist’ it would literally wipe out black culture. The glory of the black person is in overcoming racism. Doing a thing despite his blackness not because of his blackness.
Meghan would have done more for the black cause by overcoming her racial difficulties. Her reward would have been great. She would have changed the perception of blackness for a whole swathe of society. Instead it seems to me she has set the movement back and reinforced many stereotypes. If anyone had misgivings about Harry marrying a ‘woman of colour’ they have been confirmed — the ‘of colour’ part not the woman part. That’s the card that ‘s being played. That’s what she’s beating the institution over the head with.
Let’s get one thing straight, Harry himself acknowledges that all the royals are held hostage by the tabloid press. He acknowledges that what makes Meghan’s case unique is the ‘added’ aspect of her ‘race’, and the racism that this comes with. Had it been part of her lived experience she would have been fortified against it. Maybe she could have overcome it.
But she wasn’t and she didn’t. Despite not reading any papers or tabloids, she became desperately depressed with her situation. At one point she even became suicidal. She asked to be allowed to go seek help, but was told it would not be a ‘good look’. As the ‘institution’ held her passport she could go nowhere she was stuck. Isolated. Alone.
She told her husband, Harry, who hesitated to tell anyone in his family. He was ashamed. Why was he ashamed? Because every member of his family, the old ones and the new, have had to pass through the crucible of the tabloid press’ fire. They have mainly made it through to the other side. But she, a woman of colour, was not able to.
Mental health is nothing to play with — and in no way am I seeking to disparage Meghan or her claims about her mental health, only it is curious that she doesn’t say what changed. From a crises point where she was worried about being left alone for fear of what she might do to herself, to her eventual ‘escape’ more than a year later, nothing in her situation appears to have changed. Her passport wasn’t returned, she didn’t go get help, her husband didn’t get her out of the country … nothing.
Another detail worth noting in the interview relates to her fear of security first for her son Archie, and then for her husband Harry.
She declared in her Oprah interview that Archie was not to be given the title of prince and was to be offered no security of his own. She even mentioned the convention that made this so — A king George V letter patent from 1917 that meant ‘HRH” can only be applied to the reigning monarchs progeny up to the grand children. Archie being the great grand child of the reigning monarch as such would not qualify. The rule was made in 1917 so no racism there however Meghan alluded to another possible change that had been hinted at which might affect Archie — speculation, innuendo and abstraction. All hallmarks of the ‘race card’ because It is never the race card when it is blatant and explicit.
In the final run Meghan plays her strongest ‘race’ hand yet. She refers to a conversation in which a senior royal ‘explicitly’ talks about the skin tone of their at the time unborn child. She says this conversation was with Harry and took place while she was pregnant and at the same time she was being told her child would have no title or security. She doesn’t say who the senior royal was because she thinks it would be ‘damaging’ for the royal in question. Speculation is that the senior royal is Prince Charles.
Then Harry comes in and states the conversation actually took place before they were even married! That conversation could have been with Prince Charles but it could also have been with Prince William, and although in today’s cancel culture, it would indeed be damaging to Charles or William or whoever, in truth it could easily be dismissible as idle banter, speculation and curiosity. Not making excuses but if the Prince had been black and Meghan white that same conversation would still happen and not seem so bad.
Why did Harry only tell Meghan about this conversation after they were married, while she was pregnant and in ‘tandem’ with the other stuff about titles and security anyway?
And it was only at this point that I realised what the true story here is! Not a story about Meghan, Not a story about the tabloids or about racism but a story about mental health — not Meghan’s but Harrys!
Harry the little prince we watched grow up before us. Who suffered the travails of the spotlight, the legacy of his birth. Who walked behind his mother’s casket as a young man, an experience he admits scarred him for life.
Harry who has always been affected by the loss of his mother. Harry who blames the press for her death, and resents his family, the royal family, for their indifference in the build up. Harry has always rebelled against his role and the expectations placed on him. Harry who wanted to serve in the army, Harry who was the party prince, Harry who just wants to be called ‘Harry’.
Like many a resentful young man or woman before him, he went out and challenged the norms and traditions of authority. He brought home a different type of person, someone outside the mould of expectation and dared the family to object. When they didn’t He rushed headlong into a marriage when the prudent course would have been to take his time and slowly introduce his partner to the restrictions and demands of the role she was taking on.
I mean she came in without any ideas on protocols, as she says in the interview, how to talk, how to sit, what to do. She didn’t even know the national anthem of the country!
You may say this is an indictment on the institution but the truth is it is an indictment on her husband.
Harry was trapped. He railed against the conventions of his birth and on some subconscious level he orchestrated this entire drama to effect his escape. Perhaps Meghan is even aware of it otherwise she is unwitting collateral.
There is an elegant symmetry between their stories. They were both trapped by the expectations of their birth. She by the colour of her skin, and he by his royal lineage.
In Meghan he found a cause for disaffection he could articulate. Racism and discrimination. she needed to be rescued, but from what?
It plays to all the stereotypes. Damsels in distress, white Princes, on white horses to the rescue.He even expressed compassion for the rest of his family who remain trapped.
Trapped by their elevated positions. Trapped by expectation. Although saying this Harry has now discovered the real world he escaped into is not what it’s cracked up to be. He has taken for granted, over a lifetime, such things as his personal security and now when he realises that without being part of the institution he is not entitled to these things he is panicking.
Security, money, work, all the banal things of common life are new worries for him.
At the start of this article it seemed to me that Harry might be an eventual victim in all this. It seemed like Meghan would cast him off and go on to be the next Oprah. She still might do, but more and more it seems to me she is the one who will be cast off.
Watching Harry during the Oprah interview was like watching a hostage reading a prepared statement. He had all the look of the prodigal son. He has realised the world outside his bubble is a cruel hard place and he is ready to return to the warm folds of his royal life. He was curious but now he has experienced what it’s like to be a commoner and knows which life he prefers.
Harry will cast off Meghan and soon return to the Royal fold. He will be well received. The prodigal son returned. He will be humble and remorseful and take up his duties with no complaint. Meghan will be the outsider mother of his children. A Prince with children of colour who are not themselves royalty, isn’t that the best outcome for the detractors?
The whole affair will underline for the royal family the importance of maintaining lineage. After all if this episode has proven anything it has proven that not everybody can hang in the rarefied air of high Royalty.
Sure there may be many perks but it comes with a heavy burden. Noblesse Oblige.
