Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview was one of the most viewed events in recent television history – attracting 17 million viewers. What I saw on Oprah on March 7 2021 was a ‘mixed-race’ family who had been through a lot of sh*t silently for years finally speaking out against a very big and powerful institution. It was brave. It was inspirational. It put mental health on the forefront of public conversation. It took great courage for a woman who other women have envied as “having it all” to confess on a world stage that she had been so far from “having it all” at some points in her life – that she had had experienced such terrible lows as suicidal thoughts. It took immense courage to even mention race – which is such a taboo and often backfires on the victim of racism to bring it up — more on how hard it is to take about race under #4.
It was risky – and there are still grave risks involved. Who knows what harm will come their way as a result of poking the massive dragon that is the Royal Family? It is a David versus Goliath situation. It was a small slice of justice for a woman of color to have a voice in a world so hell-bent on silencing her for her inconvenient side of the story.
There has been a lot of support for Meghan, but also a significant amount of backlash. The backlash against her has been fierce and mostly with little rigor or logic but very telling of what many people prioritize and the biases and cynicism that is so rampant against women who voice a grievance, particularly women of color. In this blog-post I dissect five of the common grievances against Meghan and ask us to think about what it says about us if these are the arguments we are using to slam the revelations of March 7.
1. “She’s lying“
Let’s start with the most significant, if it were proven true, argument. According to some people, who present no evidence of this, Meghan is a manipulative mastermind who fabricated all of the incidents in the interview. All of it was made up. None of it happened. And Harry, despite having been there with her in the Palace for years, has been hypnotized into thinking that all these things that didn’t really happen happened. She fake-cried every night. And she faked having suicidal thoughts. It’s a clever ploy to steal all of his money and then to leave him. Her plan all along is to have two children with him and then leave him and find someone else even richer to bleed dry.
Right…
If you believe this, I guess you also believe that the Palace or journalists will never investigate what happened. That the letters that Meghan wrote to HR don’t actually exist, but somehow no one will ever point out that they don’t exist. And that Meghan didn’t think through that she may ever be found out. To mess with such a massive and powerful institution as the Palace, she’d have to be pretty damn stupid to fabricate everything.
So which one is it? Is she very smart or very stupid? Or is she very smart and the Palace are very stupid and will never be able to refute her numerous false claims with evidence? And if the Palace is so stupid, should they really be the figureheads for the Commonwealth?
If you are going to accuse someone of lying, you need evidence. There have been so many prominent celebrities like Piers Morgan bashing Meghan without evidence. To use his example, Piers Morgan’s line of thinking is “She’s a bitch because she ghosted me once so I don’t believe anything she says”. By his own admission, he barely knows her (The last he heard from her was one time when they had drinks years ago and they never spoke again) so how he’s in a place to judge whether she’s lying is beyond me…
Furthermore, one way to judge plausibility of allegations is to look at other context and facts. The facts of the past four hundred years do not paint the rosiest picture of The British Monarchy’s attitude towards race – just consult any colonial history documentary, book or article. None of the implications in the interview were that surprising when put in this context, just saddening that they were so pronounced in the 2010s.
2. “Harry and Meghan are so privileged they can’t be victims“
This is akin to saying money eliminates pain. And if you believe this to be true, please don’t ever complain about anything ever again if you have a roof over your head and food to eat – you are more privileged than most of the world. You should never complain if your child is sick, or God forbid if someone in your family gets cancer, or your boss doesn’t promote you at work. You aren’t entitled to feel any pain….this line of reasoning sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Because it is!
The reality is pain is pain, no matter how poor or rich you are. Money certainly protects you from a lot of things. You get superior healthcare, you feel less stressed about being left without necessities, you can afford your own security as they ultimately did etc. But there’s also a lot of things in the world that cause sadness and pain that money cannot protect you from.
If you are betrayed, if a family member dies or suffers, if you suffer a miscarriage (as Meghan did last year and wrote about bravely), if you are treated unfairly, it doesn’t really make a difference if you have $1500 in the bank account or $150 million. Pain is a universal human experience. A palace can feel like a prison. People can suffer anywhere.
3. “This was an invasion of the Royal Family’s privacy/an airing of family dirty laundry“
Um, hello, were all the British tabloids harassing Meghan Markle by following her around everywhere and printing ridiculous headlines (“Meghan made Kate cry”) not invading their privacy in the most grotesque way possible? One commentator tweeted comparing her newborn son to a chimpanzee…lovely, isn’t it, to have the birth of your child marked with such hostility?
If invasion of privacy is your concern, firstly you should be most angry at the tabloids that made her life hell and that plague most celebrities: they dissected her every move like eating avocado toast. They made her life so unbearable that she was asked to stop going outside lest she be photographed doing something so controversial like having brunch with her friends!
Secondly, don’t watch the interview then complain about someone airing their dirty laundry. That’s like peeking through your window at your neighbor changing their clothes and complaining that they weren’t mindful of their privacy — you were the pervert looking! Watching the interview was optional. If you are so concerned about another family’s privacy, I respect that – but then you shouldn’t be watching their interview and then posting about how they invaded their family’s privacy on social media.
4. “This looks bad for the Royal family“
For most of us humans, actions have consequences. Why should the Royal family be immune to being held accountable for their actions? To make the focus of your argument how bad it looks is to say that accusing someone of racism is a bigger crime than racism itself. This is what feels like with some of the headlines in British newspapers:
I know as a person of color how hard it is to bring up race or racism — there is so much stigma and backlash against you, the accussee, if you even suggest that someone was racist. That’s why despite being on the receiving end of countless microaggressions related to my race/ethnicity throughout my life, I have never ever accused anyone of being racist. It’s not that no one has been racist, it’s that it’s such a scary and fruitless thing to do that would just backfire on me. I’d be beaten down for “playing the race card”. And they can always find a non-race reason to explain why you deserved the treatment you got.
According to some of the British coverage, accusing someone of racism seems to be a bigger crime than racism itself. This type of media response encourages more people to not speak out if they experience racism
BROWNGIRLCONFIDENCE.COM
So when Meghan went ahead and spoke more candidly about race – notably she described behaviors and her experience – she never said “They were racist” – that was inferred from anyone intelligent watching the interview, women of color around the world felt relieved. We felt that finally someone had spoken about something that all of us have been too scared to ever speak about. This is why this interview was so meaningful to women of color in particular and garnered so much support from black women on Twitter.
The fact is racism and victim-shaming go hand in hand. It’s analogous to what happens in many rape cases where it’s one person’s word against the others: the victim is blamed for accusing the rapist (“Omg, stop, you are damaging his reputation”), more than the rapist is blamed for actually doing the rape! When the evidence isn’t clear, the concern should be to investigate what actually happened, rather than to shame the victim into silence. Many rapes go unreported because women don’t believe they will be believed and instead will be harassed.
To put “This looks bad” above “Let’s listen and be open-minded to the truth” shows what you prioritize: one side’s reputation over another side’s experience of racism. I believe inconvenient truths should be aired – that is how society becomes more woke and progressive and compassionate over time. These uncomfortable conversations are necessary. Others disagree and prefer us to continue pretending the Royal Family is perfect, or genuinely believe the Royal Family are descendants of God or God-chosen or something sacred that gives them license to do what they want without consequence. Here’s my crazy idea on them looking bad…
If you don’t want to look bad, don’t be bad!
BROWNGIRLCONFIDENCE.COM
5. “They shouldn’t have done this interview because the Royal Family won’t be able to respond in the same way“
This argument holds water if you believe that the rules governing the Institution of the Royal Family are immutable like the Laws of Physics. They CANNOT respond in an open and candid way because of the laws of physics. Of course, that’s not true. “The Firm” have chosen to make rules that prevent them from having candid conversations with the public, and they can choose to change the rules or keep them the same. It is a choice that the institution makes. They can choose to modernize, to investigate the racism, to issue a statement, to make things right. Heck, they can choose to come on Oprah next and tell their side of the story if they wanted to! They won’t choose that, but it’s important to recognize the CHOICES that are behind each of the protocols and rules of the Royal Family.
If they don’t want to have an open conversation with the public, that is their CHOICE. It’s not a reason for Meghan and Harry to silence their side of the story. Meghan and Harry exercised their choice. The Palace can exercise their choice in responding. That’s how a free world works. And if indeed the Royal Family are “trapped” as Harry claims they are, they are trapped in a prison of their own making. Why should people who have been forced out of the prison still be sticking to the prison’s rules of “don’t do this” and “don’t do that”?
Concluding thoughts
Overall, no one can know the details of what happened, and there are always multiple sides of any story. I’m not claiming anywhere that Meghan and Harry are perfect – though surely will be accused of doing so by unscrupulous trolls! No human is perfect. Maybe there are some lies or exaggerations in their recounting. But I doubt that the whole thing is an elaborate fabrication and that the Royal Family is blameless and treated them fairly. The Royal Family’s history is all about colonial exploitation – that they would be concerned with race is not at all surprising.
I don’t know Meghan Markle/Sussex personally, so I can only talk about her in a symbolic sense – what she represented for women of color everywhere by speaking out publicly was so heart-touching and inspirational: a voice.
