Meghan Markle talks to Mariah Carey on her podcast about being biracial. Backlash follows.
Meghan Markle has launched a podcast, and on it she’s been getting real about how her race has shaped her experiences in life and with the royal family.
Meghan Markle has launched a podcast, and on it she’s been getting real about how her race has shaped her experiences in life and with the royal family. On an episode released on Tuesday, she told singer Mariah Carey, who is also biracial, that she wasn’t treated as a Black woman until she started dating Prince Harry.
“If there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband,” Markle said. “Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”
Having lighter skin has protected me in some circles, but it hasn’t meant that I never encounter racism.
Markle was saying something honest and important: acknowledging the privilege that can come with lighter skin at the same time that it doesn’t inoculate you from racism. Yet predictably, social media critics found it to be another opportunity to pile on the Duchess of Sussex. The heart of the outrage was the idea that she’s been embraced as a Black woman when as a biracial woman she’s had choices in her identity — and has seemed to use those choices to lead a white woman’s life.
While I can’t speak to most of Markle’s path as a successful actress who then married a member of the British royal family, I can relate to her experiences around race. Having lighter skin has protected me in some circles, but it hasn’t meant that I never encounter racism. It should be possible to understand that these circumstances can co-exist rather than cancel each other out, and that having gotten breaks in some cases doesn’t negate the entire existence of being a woman of color. I was glad to see Markle articulate that truth — but disheartened that the anger directed her way shows that many want to invalidate this reality.
Rating: 5