‘Attacking the Queen is like attacking our grandmother’, one social media user said as I scrolled through the pandemonium surrounding Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah. Another user echoed my thoughts, writing, ‘imagine comparing your nan to someone who doesn’t even know you exist.’
While I agreed, I couldn’t help but think, ‘not me. Queen Elizabeth knows I exist, because I’ve met her.’ I gave flowers to the Queen in 2000 in Launceston, Tasmania. It was a stressful affair that at one point I refused to go through with. When it did come down to giving the bouquet of flowers to the Queen, I was relieved to pass on my burden. She was a little surprised and said thank you. Her wide-eyed expression was something I can only put down to seeing a black face in the sea of so many white. From that point onwards I had a ‘special’ connection to the British Monarchy. For a fleeting moment in time, the Queen knew I existed.
And this fondness was founded on more than a single moment. I was born in a Commonwealth country, Kenya and moved to another, Australia. I have family that settled in the UK. My first ever overseas trip from Australia was to London to visit them. British rule and influence have followed me across the world, putting a very real spin on ‘the empire the sun never sets on’.
And yet I never had to confront the idea that the British monarchy — and the British Empire at large — was built on racist principles and benefitted from racist practices. Not until it came from the mouth of one of the Royal family’s favourite iconoclasts, Meghan Markle.
I must admit, prior to Meghan’s interview with Oprah, I didn’t think too highly of her. I believed a part of what the British tabloids were publishing about her: that rather than motivated by love, she had some kind ulterior motive in marrying Harry and that she was calculated.
Still, despite any reservations I had about Meghan, I was overjoyed by the prospect of a Black royal. I was in London during the historic union of Meghan and Harry, and I felt the undeniable sense that British Monarchy were becoming ‘modern’, progressive and inclusive; that the oldest and most distinguished institution in Britain was proudly marching in lock-step with its multicultural pluralist subjects in welcoming faces of other colours into the world’s most photographed family.
I was wrong.
'An institution with a colonial legacy that has brutalised, displaced and devastated the lives of black people globally is, drumroll, racist?'
The revelations and claims made by Meghan and Harry not only painted a damning picture of living within the confines of the Royal family, but pointed to a larger issue of systemic racism running in the background of public and palace life.
‘I just didn’t want to be alive anymore’, Meghan said, when explaining the pressure to perform public duties while facing relentless media criticism. Meghan arguably knew what she was getting herself into; as though being constantly buffeted by the often merciless British tabloids was merely a part of a job she knowingly signed up for.
Yet she was not prepared for an onslaught of racism on social media and in the pages of tabloids. Meghan revealed that Royal family members knew press coverage of her was ‘disproportionally terrible’, and yet did little to alleviate her suffering.
Meghan described the media as ‘inciting so much racism’ in the way the tabloids continuously drew attention to Meghan’s race. One Daily Mail UK article, titled ‘Harry's girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed — so will he be dropping by for tea?’ The publication intentionally chose to play on the stereotype of Black people living in ‘unsafe’ neighbourhoods to cause controversy around Meghan’s race. In 2016, Prince Harry released a statement condemning ‘the racial undertones of comment pieces’ aimed at his then fiancée.
Harry addressed this in the 2021 interview, admitting that ‘colonial undertones’ existed in the media’s treatment of his wife. This negative coverage seemed to exist in sharp contrast to that of William and Kate.
And it wasn’t just the media’s behaviour that was (perhaps predictably) lacking. Meghan felt that the wider Royal family left them out of a circle of protection from the media that benefitted other members, that they were ‘willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.’
The bombshell moment of the interview came when the Duchess shocked Oprah and the rest of world when she said there were ‘concerns and conversations about how dark [Archie’s] skin might be when he was born.’ Megan clarified this was discussed in the context of what that would possibly mean for the monarchy.
The couple clarified that neither the Queen nor Prince Philip were behind the comments.
And when asked whether he believed the British Monarch to be racist, Prince William told reporters, ‘We are very much not a racist family’ as he walked alongside Duchess Kate Middleton and behind them what looked like a strategically placed black woman.
The statement did nothing for me. Coming off the back of the Black Lives Matter movement and the world’s attempt to have a sophisticated discussion about racism and how it disproportionally affects the lives of Black people globally — this felt like an anti-climax at best.
An institution with a colonial legacy that has brutalised, displaced and devastated the lives of black people globally is, drumroll, racist? The impacts of this history are ongoing. As Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging explains in The New York Times, ‘The legacy of Britain’s history of empire — a global construct based on a doctrine of white supremacy — its pioneering role in the slave trade and ideologies of racism that enabled it, and policies of recruiting people from the Caribbean and Africa for low-paid work and then discriminating against them in education and housing, is with us today’.
Colonialism and racism are like a sick double act. The history of the land we live on, Australia, is indicative of this. British colonisation wiped out the First Nations population and reduced it by 90 per cent. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only received the right to vote in 1962, all the while this country saw fit to remove Indigenous children from their homes in an attempt to prevent the continuation of Indigenous culture and language. Yet, there has been no apology from the British Monarchy to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We know they are capable of it, Queen Elizabeth apologised to the Maori people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
I’d be more surprised if the British Monarchy wasn’t racist.
Even after all my years of living in the British Commonwealth, I hadn’t been forced to consider this before, like I have now. Perhaps it was the PR machine of the monarchy at play. Or maybe that the reluctance on the part of the royals to publicly address a history of institutional racism and systemic inequality in health, education, and housing, hadn’t seemed as starkly unacceptable as it does now.
That’s why Meghan Markle’s strength in fronting the world and speaking so honestly about her experience felt like I had been woken from my own passiveness. How could I for a moment forget the hypocrisy of the Royal family in relation to race issues?
The Queen’s response to the interview was expectedly conciliatory, but still lacking. ‘The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.’
When society is affected by an insidious disease like racism, the only way to get rid of it is to identify it when we see it. To argue about whether it exists or not or whether ‘recollections may vary’ is distracting.
If I had anything to say to the Queen, who knew I existed for a brief moment, I’d tell her to speak now while the world is having this conversation. It’s a legacy worth leaving, Lizzy.
Najma Sambul is a Somali-Australian writer. She writes both non fiction and fiction, but is adamant fiction writing still has a future. She has a number of unpublished short stories and a half completed comedy screenplay on her laptop. She remains optimistic about their future.
Main image: Oprah Winfrey interviews Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (Handout/Getty Images)