A Harry and Meghan think piece to end Harry and Meghan think pieces.
Photo Credit: Netflix
When Prince Harry gave a statement in November 2016 condemning the racial abuse and harrassment towards his new girlfriend, I’ll be the first to say I was confused. Mostly because this was the first I was hearing that Prince Harry had a new girlfriend, let alone that she’d been subject to any abuse or harrassment. And then because I couldn’t believe the child of the future King was dating someone that could be subjected to racial abuse and harrassment. The confusion didn’t last for long though. Once I got over the shock of “Prince Harry is actually dating a mixed race Black woman”, my next thought was “good luck to her, she’s going to face hell for him.”
2016 was a horrendous time to exist in the west as a person of colour, as an immigrant or the child of immigrants, as someone who could be seen as “an outsider.” Or, perhaps more accurate to the tone of the time, an intruder. In the UK we had just had the Brexit campaign and vote, something which splintered our country completely in a way it may not ever recover from in our lifetimes. A campaign that at it’s core was about xenophobia and racism, fuelled by fear and sold on lies. Billboards that positioned brown faces as the enemy were endorsed by politicians, and immigration sold as the root of all our problems. Whilst some people claimed it was about business or economy, I think 6 years on it’s safe to say our struggling economy isn’t thankful to Brexit, but the rise in hate crime since the vote suggests the racists and xenophobes of the country are feeling emboldened. And in the US, where Meghan was from, they’d just elected Donald Trump - a man who openly called Mexican immigrants rapists, drug dealers and criminals, mocked disability at his rallies, called African countries “shitholes” and has a lifelong history of deep racism.
I say this because it’s important to remember the context of the time that Meghan Markle entered the UK consciousness. A mixed race Black woman from outside of the country dating a symbol of “True Britishness” was always going to get extreme reaction. But in 2016? In that political and social climate? At a time where anyone not White British was an intruder trying to destroy our Great British Values, Meghan Markle was the ultimate example of that for the right wing press. You’d have to truly love someone to be willing to take that on.
Right wing press makes up the large majority of mainstream news in the United Kingdom. The Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Telegraph, The Sun and The Times are all right wing news outlets, and when you add in the tabloid magazines like OK who are owned by the same people as the Daily Express? It’s an overwhelming number of voices compared to The Guardian/The Observer and the Daily Mirror, the only mainstream left wing newspapers in the UK. Then we look at individual reporters, journalists, and presenters that have made it their personal mission to make her life miserable - Piers Morgan springs to mind - it’s a never ending cocophony of people telling her what they thought.
And boy did they let her know what they thought. It was constant from the day the world knew who she was to him - Stylist recently curated an article covering the timeline of nonsense Meghan has been subjected to in this country. On and on it went, and often the language was subtle, and incredibly clever. The language was subtle enough that those of us who had heard it before knew it was racist, but the people who don’t experience racism could claim we were overreacting, or too sensitive, or reading into it too much. It’s incredibly really, the way they used Meghan to hurt all of us they considered intruders. Whether it was linking her home to gang violence, creating a total non-story to link her to drought and murder, deciding she was a bully, giving her grief for - and I’m not joking - touching her own baby bump, every single thing Meghan was, did, or said, was torn apart by the press.
And then, when enough was finally enough and Harry took his family and left, that too was torn apart. They didn’t want her here, and they’re furious now she’s gone. And it’s so easy for the press and public to blame Meghan for Harry’s departure. Harry, their golden prince, it couldn’t possibly have been his decision to leave. It didn’t matter how many times he said the UK press was destroying his mental health, it didn’t matter how many times he said he recognised what was being done to Meghan because the same thing was done to his mother, it didn’t matter how many times he said he feared he would see history repeat and once again lose the most important woman in his life, as far as the UK press and public were concerned it wasn’t them causing this, it wasn’t Harry choosing this. It was Meghan.
And now with the release of their Netflix documentary it’s much the same thing. Almost all the front pages today claim the show is a “direct assault on the Queen’s legacy.” The Daily Mail has dedicated 18 whole pages to letting people know how awful they think Meghan and Harry are. Every day on Twitter some variation of “Meghan Markle is a liar” or “Harry is a traitor” is trending. A Tory MP wants them stripped of their titles.
And here is what is interesting to me - the disconnect. Harry and Meghan are simply saying the sheer volume of hatred and abuse from the UK press and public is what drove them to leave. And in response to that the UK press and public are…sending them hatred and abuse whilst also calling them liars for claiming they get hatred and abuse from the UK press and public. And what’s doubly interesting is that Harry is right. This is history repeating itself. This is exactly what was seen after his mother was killed. The press blamed the public for their intense and unresting desire for more content, the public blamed the press for hounding her, for never giving her a minutes peace, and between them came the conspiracy that “the firm” orchestrated the crash. Both then and now it was ignored that the relationship between press and public is a symbiotic one. They feed off each other. They are both to blame.
The truth is, in both situations, a well loved member of the royal family fell in love with someone who was not white. And in both situations the UK press and public felt so entitled to that well loved member of the royal family that they totally dehumanised them, and the person they cared about. In both situations the UK press and public were so desperate for more story, more content, more controversy, that they had no concept of boundaries or respect, and they pushed and pushed. Unfortunately, in 1997 Harry was too young to do anything about it, and they pushed too far. He doesn’t want it to happen again.
So here’s what I would love. I would love to not hear or see anymore opinion pieces on Meghan and Harry. I would actually hazard that really, if people took a minute and asked themselves “Do I care?” before they clicked the link to the latest Daily Mail hate campaign piece, the majority would find the answer is no. They’re engaging in this because they’re being bombarded with it, and they’re being bombarded with it because they’re engaging with it, but actually no one really cares. So let them live. And if you’re still thinking “No actually, I do want to continue giving them grief.” I ask you to ask yourself: What do you gain by engaging with this effort to destroy them? What do you lose by simply letting these two human beings be? And if you’re 100% honest with yourself, what reason is there other than love for anyone to subject themselves to the extent and intensity of scrutiny that Meghan is under every day?
Let this documentary be the end of it. They’ve done what they feel they need to, to show people their truth. To tell their story as they see it. Believe it or don’t, but let it be. Let them be.