Mixed Race Studies

Meghan Markle, colorism and the archetype of the ‘tragic mulatto’

The Washington Post
2022-09-04

Karen Attiah, Columnist

Aug. 31 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Also killed were her Egyptian lover, Dodi Al Fayed, and their driver, who was trying to evade a horde of photo-seeking paparazzi chasing them.

Diana was White female innocence personified — “Shy Di,” who had the sympathy of many women who faced unhappy marriages inflamed by adultery and unwelcoming in-laws. As the years went on, Diana’s story became about her attempts to use both her glamour and relatability to break out of the confining box of the British royal family.

It’s probably not a coincidence, then, that Meghan Markle chose last month to launch “Archetypes,” a podcast that aims to explore the stereotypes and boxes that societies put women in.

Which led me to think about the meaning of Markle’s saga with the royal family.

In a conversation on “Archetypes” with biracial singer Mariah Carey, Markle discussed how she was made more aware of the shifting goal posts of race. “I think for us, it’s so different because we’re light-skinned,” she said. “You’re not treated as a Black woman. You’re not treated as a White woman. You sort of fit in between.”…

Read the entire article here.

[Meghan] Markle’s frankness should be applauded as brave in a nation that still fails to fully acknowledge the roughly 7% of us who claim multiple races. Indeed, either through erasure or denial, American media—both social and traditional—seem to insist that biracial folks like myself simply do not exist.

David Kaufman, “Meghan Markle is the biracial hero I’ve always wanted,” Quartz, November 28, 2017. https://qz.com/quartzy/1138712/is-meghan-markle-black-no-shes-biracial/.

Meghan Markle is the biracial hero I’ve always wanted

Quartz
2017-11-28

David Kaufman, Global Lifestyle Editor

Barack Obama may have been a hero to “black America,” but for biracial Americans like myself, the former president never quite felt like the champion we’d waited so long for.

Early on, he seemed like he might be: As the son of a white mother and Kenyan father, Obama vocally touted his unique—and uniquely multi-cultural—background throughout his education, writing and early career. Finally, it seemed, folks like me had found a role model.

Yet when it came time for Obama to shift into “candidate” mode, he clearly calculated that positioning himself as black, rather than biracial, was the wisest way to secure the presidency. Little changed once he entered to Oval Office.

Indeed, despite having as much white heritage as black, Obama formally marked himself African-American on his 2010 Census form. The timing was important: That year, for one of the first times ever, the Census Bureau included a multi-racial category. I was thrilled to check the box—and had naively hoped the President would too.

Nearly a decade later, we now have Meghan Markle, the biracial future bride of Britain’s Prince Harry. Born in California to a Caucasian father and African-American mother, Markle is vocal about her biracial parentage. “I’m half black/half white,” she wrote in a piece for British Elle last year—six simple words that honor her background in a way the former president avoided…

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Being Biracial Shouldn’t Be An Excuse To Be Racially Neutral

Medium
2020-01-26

Dwayne Wong (Omowale)

Whenever Meghan Markle comes up in the news, my mind immediately always comes back to this quote from her:

On the heels of the racial unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore, the tensions that have long been percolating under the surface in the US have boiled over in the most deeply saddening way. And as a biracial woman, I watch in horror as both sides of a culture I define as my own become victims of spin in the media, perpetuating stereotypes and reminding us that the States has perhaps only placed bandages over the problems that have never healed at the root.

I, on the other hand, have healed from the base. While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that. To say who I am, to share where I’m from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman.

The reason for this is that Markle’s fame is largely based on her racial identity. Not only has she received a great deal of attention for her marriage to Prince Harry, but this attention comes largely from the fact that she is not white. As Funmi Olutoye wrote: “We’ve made it. I say ‘we’ because even though she’s mixed race, the world still looks at her as black.” The notion that the elevation of a single black individual represents black progress is misguided. This is a topic that I addressed when I wrote The Black African Crisis in the Age of a Black President to help dispel the idea that Barack Obama’s presidency in of itself represented collective advancement for black people. But beyond that, Olutoye invokes the one-drop rule to claim Markle for black people, despite the fact that Markle’s remarks demonstrate that Markle clearly regards herself as a biracial woman who stands on the fence between black and white. Markle does not profess to be a black woman…

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Prince Charles, Meghan Markle and the power of racist microagressions

NBC News
2021-12-01

Sarah E. Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Something that may seem innocently ambiguous can in fact leave an incredibly powerful mark.

Imagine that upon your engagement, instead of congratulations, you hear that your future father-in-law has begun musing about your future son or daughter’s complexion. Now imagine how that would feel if you were biracial and the first Black-identified person to marry into the modern British royal family, and none other than the next king of England was allegedly speculating about the race of your hypothetical children.

According to the new book “Brothers and Wives: Inside the Private Lives of William, Kate, Harry, and Meghan,” written by Christopher Andersen, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, didn’t have to imagine how that might feel — she lived it. Among other tidbits, royals expert Andersen claims Prince Charles discussed the potential melanin levels of his future grandchildren over breakfast with his wife, Camilla.

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Revealing Britain’s Systemic Racism: The Case of Meghan Markle and the Royal Family

Routledge
2021-04-01
266 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9780367765453
Paperback ISBN: 9780367765415
eBook ISBN: 9781003167433

Kimberley Ducey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Joe R. Feagin, Distinguished Professor and Ella C. McFadden Professor of Sociology
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Revealing Britain’s Systemic Racism applies an existing scholarly paradigm (systemic racism and the white racial frame) to assess the implications of Markle’s entry and place in the British royal family, including an analysis that bears on visual and material culture. The white racial frame, as it manifests in the UK, represents an important lens through which to map and examine contemporary racism and related inequities. By questioning the long-held, but largely anecdotal, beliefs about racial progressiveness in the UK, the authors provide an original counter-narrative about how Markle’s experiences as a biracial member of the royal family can help illumine contemporary forms of racism in Britain. Revealing Britain’s Systemic Racism identifies and documents the plethora of ways systemic racism continues to shape ecological spaces in the UK. Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin challenge romanticized notions of racial inclusivity by applying Feagin’s long-established work, aiming to make a unique and significant contribution to literature in sociology and in various other disciplines.

Table of Contents

• Systemic Racism: Britain Now and Then
• Straight Out of the White Racial Frame
• Post-Racial Duchess or Trophy Wife of Diversity?
• White Men Ruling and the Problem with Meghan Markle
• Feminist Counter-Framer and Anti-Racist Counter-Framer: Disrupter of Elite White Dominance
• “Where Is This Racism You Keep Talking About?”: Sincere Fictions of the Virtuous White Self
• Concluding Thoughts: The Royals, British Racism, and the Coronavirus Pandemic

Royally Racist: The Fear Behind the One-Drop Rule to Preserve Whiteness

Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press
2021-03-11

Yaba Blay

Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are so done with the way the royal family has treated them. We wish the couple and their children all the happiness in the world. Photo credit: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The ripple effects from the truth bomb of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will take a while to settle. During their two-hour talk, the royal couple revealed the royal family’s concern with how dark the skin of their child, Archie, would be when he was born. Also, Archie will not be granted a title or protection. Put two and two together, and the reason is clear. Racism is a hell of a drug, isn’t it? Not even Markle’s perceived proximity to whiteness, granted to her as a biracial woman, can protect her son. We may live in the woke times of the twenty-first century, but the royal family’s “concern” is a fear is as old as the slave trade their ancestors took part in. As Yaba Blay writes in One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, it’s a historical fear, steeped in colonialism, over preserving the purity of whiteness and the superiority ascribed to it.

The US Census reveals much about the country’s perspective on race. It counts people according to how the nation defines people, and historically, those people counted as Black have been those people with any known Black ancestry. Blacks are defined by the one-drop rule. No other racial or ethnic group is defined in this way, nor does any other nation rely upon this formula; the one-drop rule is definitively Black and characteristically American. It should make sense then that the origins of the rule are directly linked to the history of Black people in the United States, and as such, our discussion of the one-drop rule begins during the period of colonial enslavement…

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Meghan Markle, The Royal Family, Right Wing Media Animus and The Specter of Deeply Entrenched Racism!

Medium
2021-03-11

Elwood Watson, Ph.D., Professor of African American and Gender Studies, Post-WWII U.S. History
East Tennessee State University

It didn’t take long for the right-wing media, here in America and in Britain, to gin up their propaganda/outrage machine towards Meghan Markle, better known as The Duchess of Sussex. “Unreasonable,” “entitled,” “ungrateful,” “spoiled,” “Liar! Fake Outrage!” “Fights, Camera, Action,” “Megxile,” “So Who is The Royal Racist?” and so on. Hell, perennial Meghan Markle antagonist and fierce critic, Piers Morgan, literally screamed and stomped off of the set of the program Good Morning Britain. It was a meltdown of epic proportions for all to see.

They were savvy enough not to refer to her as “uppity,” a word reserved for Black people who anger racist, White people by taking them out of their comfort zones. These are the Black folks who upset White bigots by “doing their own thing on their own terms” and, in essence, by telling such Whites to “Go to hell!” Some in the right-wing media would have liked to have called her a “n*gger bitch,” though they know that would have resulted in some consequences, even in our current climate of over racial animus…

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Royal family’s ‘post-racial’ fantasy unravels

Cable News Network (CNN)
2021-03-08

Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies
Birmingham City University

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and the Duchess of Sussex depart after their wedding ceremony at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19, 2018.

(CNN) When Harry and Meghan walked down the aisle, surrounded by examples of #BlackExcellence, and being serenaded by a gospel choir on May 19, 2018, it was meant to mark a new era in race relations. Even the royal family was being “modernized,” dragged into the 21st century showing just how far we have come. Right wing papers like the Daily Mail even heralded the Markles’ remarkable achievement of going from “cotton slaves to royalty” in just 150 years. The only surprise is how quickly this post-racial fantasy unraveled, culminating in Sunday’s tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, revealing the harrowing time Markle says she endured as a serving royal…

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The Gospel according to Meghan

The Christian Recorder: The Official Organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
2020-02-28

Jennifer P. Sims, Ph.D., Columnist; Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Alabama, Huntsville

Jennifer P. Sims, Ph.D.

A few weeks ago, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry shocked their family and the world by announcing that they would step back from their roles as senior members of the British Royal Family. Contributing to their decision was the intense media attention and its accompanying salacious criticism of their family. Meghan, who is mixed-race (Black/White) and American, has been receiving the brunt of the media abuse. From newspaper stories disdaining her every behavior, despite having lauded some of the same actions when White British Royals like Kate Middleton did them, to a reporter literally comparing her newborn son to a monkey, the British media has been unconscionable toward the Duchess of Sussex.

Social media dubbed the family’s departure from the UK “Megxit,” a word play on “Brexit” which refers to Britain’s recent exit from the European Union, and leading news sources reached out to social scientists for comments. In an interview with The Washington Post, for example, I discussed the role of anti-black racism and classism in the Sussex family’s experiences. My colleague, who is a psychologist, explained to PBS News Hour how the experiences of mixed-race Blacks such as Meghan and [Barack] Obama reiterate that a few minorities gaining positions of power does not signal the end of prejudiced thinking. A historian penned an essay that situated Megxit within the Black feminist tradition of resilience…

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