Why Meghan Markle and Prince Harry should name the royal racist

They rightly stood up to racism, but by not doing one thing, Meghan and Harry have left the entire royal family in the firing line.

COMMENT

Of all the flow-on effects, aftershocks and seismic tremors that Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah Winfrey interview triggered, one of the more curious ones is the weaponising of the word “conversations”.

When Meghan first revealed to the talk show titan that there had been “conversations” behind palace gates about “how dark” her unborn baby’s skin might be, both Winfrey and the world went slack-jawed.

As the 10-time Emmy winner and billionaire so succinctly put it, gasping in horror, “Whaaaaat?”

Us too, Oprah, us too.

Later, the 67-year-old asked: “Because they were concerned that if he were too brown, that that would be a problem? Are you saying that?”

Harry and Meghan seen during their interview with Oprah Winfrey. Picture: CBS

Meghan responded: “I wasn’t able to follow up with why, but that – if that’s the assumption you’re making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one.”

For Buckingham Palace, this moment was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb landing on the palace forecourt during the changing of the guard. Catastrophic, potentially irreparable damage, pure and simple.

Now, a new edition of the heavily Sussex sympathetic biography Finding Freedom claims that the couple “considered naming” the Windsor in question, the Daily Mail has reported.

(The same week the interview aired, Oprah clarified that it the unnamed royal was not the Queen or her husband Prince Philip, saying that Harry “wanted to make sure I knew and if I had the opportunity to share it that it was not his grandmother or grandfather that were a part of those conversations”.)

Of all the other charges that Harry and Meghan laid at the royal family’s feet – of institutional cruelty and indifference when she suffered from suicidal thoughts during her pregnancy, of Prince Charles cutting them off financially, of the palace failing to protect her when the British media started circling – their claims of institutional racism were by far the most devastating to the institution.

The Queen, after all, is head of an organisation that represents literally billions of people of colour and the allegations the Sussexes raised went to the moral heart of what the monarchy stands for.

The racism claims rocked the royal family. Picture: Jim Clarke/AFP

However, with the couple’s racism claims back in the headlines thanks to Freedom (a book they have moved they have distanced themselves from and have denied collaborating with the authors) it’s time to ask the question, is this current state of affairs good enough?

Do Harry and Meghan have a responsibility here to either speak up or pipe down?

Essentially, during their Oprah interview they didn’t so much tell-all about what they experienced but tell-halfway.

Both the Duke and Duchess, during their interview, spoke about respecting the Queen, however the couple declining to point the finger is the opposite of that.

Harry and Meghan, by not outing the person who took part in the conversation about their son’s skin colour, has not protected some unspecified member of the royal family from global infamy but has impugned the entire royal family.

By not naming who made the remark, Meghan and Harry have put the entire royal family in the firing line. Picture: Carl Court/AFP

That is not fair. Nearly six months on since the two-hour prime time TV special, the entire royal family remains tarred with the same racist brush in many people’s minds.

If the monarchy is going to be tried in the court of public opinion – and may very well end being found deeply wanting – then we need all the facts, not broad brushstrokes.

In fact, by not identifying which HRH made the nauseating comments, what Harry and Meghan have done is not save the person in question from global infamy but condemned the entire family.

That’s not trying to help someone save face, that’s just being a bit gutless.

Harry and Meghan, in raising these racism allegations, have started a very necessary and important conversation. But the truly brave thing here, the truly gutsy position, would have been to recount all the facts and to reveal what exactly the “conversation” in question was and, crucially, who was involved.

If they had done that, square-shouldered and proud, facing off against the palace, it would have demonstrated the courage of their convictions.

Buckingham Palace’s official statement in response to Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah Winfrey.

If it’s any consolation, Britons are firmly on the couple’s side here. A poll conducted by the Express over the weekend found that 63.1 per cent of those surveyed thought the Sussexes should name the person they claim made the skin colour comment. (The same poll found that 48 per cent of Americans thought similarly.)

On the other side of the fence here, the savvy and cunning play on the Windsors’ part would be to have the ‘royal racist’ reveal themselves via a sympathetic, credible news source like the Times or the Telegraph. For one thing, it would neutralise the explosive threat that Harry and Meghan are currently holding over palace that they could name names at any moment.

For another, it would give the royal family the space to manage the revelation and to potentially contextualise or explain what happened.

More than that, it would show the world that the palace is not shying away from the racism question that Harry and Meghan have raised. Public opinion, on both sides of the pond, is unequivocal on this. Polling done last week showed that 55 per cent of Britons and 61.6 per cent of Americans said they thought that the Queen has not ‘done enough to address Harry and Meghan’s racism allegations.’

With the race genie well and truly out of the bottle, there is no shoving it back in, nor should there be. The sooner the monarchy truly metabolises this fact, the better for the institution. The last year has seen a global reckoning on race and now the onus is on the royal house to step and be a part of this dialogue, not to cower behind anodyne statements and stony-faced refusals to engage. That simply is not good enough.

But Harry and Meghan have a responsibility here too. They are the ones who opened up this particular Pandora’s box.

When the Sussexes announced they wanted out as full-time working members of the royal family in January last year, the Queen quickly put the kybosh on their proposed half-in, half-out model. So too now do they need to decide to either push on and level specific charges against whoever was involved in these “conversations” or to draw a line under this chapter.

And for Her Majesty? If the royal house wants to survive the 21st century then they must, both publicly and privately, start having a lot more “conversations” about the intersection of the monarchy’s past, present and race.

Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Why Meghan Markle and Prince Harry should name the royal racist