Education
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BA. In Afro American Studies and History, University of Pennsyvlania
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PhD in American Studies; minor in Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota
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Rockefeller PostDoc in Womanism, University of Georgia
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JD, William Mitchell College of Law (Honors Program)
Research Interests
Biography
Is the U.K. Ready for a Reckoning on Race?
Among the many revelations in the new Netflix series Harry & Meghan, perhaps the most compelling is that Meghan Markle did not identify as Black until she married into The Royal Family. “I’d say people are very aware of my race because they made it such an issue when I went to the U.K., but before that, most people didn’t treat me like a ‘Black woman.’ So that talk didn’t have to happen for me,” she says in the series’ first episode.
Her mother, Doria Ragland, acknowledges that she missed an opportunity to teach her daughter an important lesson. “As a parent, in hindsight, absolutely I’d like to go back and have that kind of real conversation about how the world sees you.”
What is complicated about Meghan, however, is that the world does not see her the way they see Ms. Ragland. It would have been difficult to have “real conversations” with her daughter when grocers mistook Ms. Ragland for Meghan’s nanny. Even Meghan’s Hollywood agent does not realize initially that she is mixed race; her agent thinks Meghan is “sun-kissed California-freckly.”
In the second episode, we see footage of Markle’s acceptance speech after receiving the 2022 NAACP President’s Award. “People don’t talk about what it’s like to be mixed race. So much of my self-identification was trying to figure out where I fit in. And I think a lot of that is that you are not White enough and you are not Black enough. But I don’t see the world that way,” she tells the audience. The camera pans to her mother, Doria, who is nodding her braided head like a crown of Black American royalty. The scene then shifts to a one-on-one interview with Prince Harry, who declares that his children are mixed race and how proud he is of that.
Until this month, the representations of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have mostly been on the British tabloids’ terms. We get these new snapshots because Meghan and Harry are controlling the images and narrative. The first three episodes of the Netflix series reveal that Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan Markle in 2017 could have been a moment to reimagine the Commonwealth. As we learn, that did not happen, and the series helps us understand why.
Writer and activist Afua Hirsch reminds us that the United Kingdom enslaved more people than the United States; it’s just that their enslavement was in the Caribbean. Slavery fueled the early British Empire, and the first slave voyage for Great Britain was financed by Queen Elizabeth I. In the mid-20th century, Britain recruited Caribbean people to move to London for low-wage jobs.
In the last 50 to 60 years there has been a call to reimagine the Commonwealth as racially inclusive. A reimagining does not happen for most, but it has happened for Prince Harry, who has admitted that wearing a Nazi uniform when he was 20 was the biggest mistake of his life. An Afro-British friend of Harry’s, Misan Harriman, who leads Southbank Centre in London, said that Harry was in an echo chamber of absolute privilege. Once Harry stepped out of the chamber, he realized there was a much bigger world, and admits that where racial issues were concerned, he was “sleepwalking” through life. It took only eight days after their engagement to issue a statement about how the British press was racializing his fiancée.
If Harry’s awakening can be seen as an opportunity for the nation to change, then the public response to his marriage shows how far the nation has to go. British historian David Olusoga reminds us that as hopeful as many Millennial Brits were to see the possibility of a modern monarchy, the U.K. was mired in a culture war over the U.K.’s relationship to the European Union when the couple got engaged. If most Brits are invested in celebrating their abolishment of slavery without acknowledging that former slave owners were financially compensated by the British government for their losses, why would we expect Brits to see Meghan as mixed race? Their 21st-century racial formations are no different than the 18th-century Confederate U.S.’s “one drop” rule. Once on their soil, mixed-race Meghan becomes Black.
What the series reveals is that the U.K. has an opportunity to follow Prince Harry’s lead, to pop the bubble of white privilege. If he can change from wearing a Nazi uniform at age 20 to living in a mixed-race family at 38, it’s not too late for a nation that led the global slave trade for hundreds of years to become a leading anti-racist force in the world. Can the British public similarly wake up from the racist past that bred its racist present? Kehinde Andrews, who became the U.K.’s first Black Studies professor just in 2021, argues that the Commonwealth is still an empire that promotes an economic relationship of intergenerational wealth. This wealth is built on the backs of intergenerational extraction from impoverished African, Indian, and Caribbean nations. Many Afro-Brits, like Harry’s friend, Hariman who once regarded Prince Harry as racist, identified the Royal’s speaking at the 25th anniversary of the Stephen Lawrence memorial—26 days before his wedding to Meghan—as part of his anti-racist journey.
We will never know how the Royal Family really sees Meghan. Before Queen Elizabeth II passed away, Barbados removed her as its head of state, on November 30, 2021, breaking its ties with the British royal family—and with it, one of the island’s last remaining imperial bonds to the United Kingdom. Then-Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, was in attendance as Barbados celebrated ending its formal links with his 95-year-old mother. Now that Queen Elizabeth II has passed away, Charles is King of 15 other realms including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Jamaica. Prince Harry’s transformation around race could lead to the U.K. reforming its colonial impact on other Caribbean nations.
As you watch the documentary, pause when David Olusoga asks, “Who dreamed that Britain could have a Black princess?” Apparently, the significance of the moment hasn’t been shared by all. The day the documentary was released, Tory MP Bob Seely revealed he is preparing a bill that would see Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stripped of their royal titles. Once the U.K. gets its Black Princess, the empire strikes back.
Duchess Harris, JD, PhD is a Professor of American Studies at Macalester College. She and Julie Schwietert-Collazo are co-editors of the forthcoming book, "Racism, and the British Empire: Essays on Meghan Markle and the Monarchy."
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