LAST WEEK The Guardian reported that, in his autobiography, Prince Harry describes how Prince William physically assaulted him in 2019, enraged by his marriage to Meghan Markle.
In the lead-up to their fight, William reportedly called Markle “difficult, rude and abrasive.” The fight, and Harry’s subsequent injuries, are what’s drawing headlines, but it was William’s words that struck me.
Because I, most black people – and particularly black women – know how exactly how it feels to show up, strain against rules designed for us to fail, and be labeled as brash or undignified the moment we complain.
So I tweeted, “Raise your hand if you’re Black and have also been called ‘difficult,’ ‘rude,’ or ‘abrasive.’
The response was immediate and deafening.
One journalist wrote that when she resisted people treating her badly, she was told she had “a chip on her shoulder” and that she was “aggressive, when I am just matching the energy coming my way.”
An actress reported she’s been called “’mean,’ for being direct.”
Folks added other racialised epithets: angry, gruff, unruly, unpleasant, difficult, intimidating, harsh, hostile, bitter, demanding, uppity.
Thousands of people replied with raised hands, or tweets sharing their own experiences affirming how, under white supremacy, any behaviour beyond unquestioning compliance will be treated as a threat.
Meghan Markle never had a chance. Whether in public or private, white rage can’t abide black truth. Black grief, black grievances, black critical thought or black criticism.
White entitlement can’t abide black voices speaking up, black beauty shining bright, black blood diluting white power.
The only way the royal family would ever even tolerate her presence would be if she completely obscured every trace of her ancestry, disavowed her mother, buried any trace of her heritage beneath a suffocating whiteness.
Even then, she would only have purchased a tacit acceptance; the frosty welcome one offers an uninvited guest when it’s more awkward to ask them to leave.
But Meghan wasn’t willing to sell her identity. She refused to make herself smaller to fit within the prison built to be her residence. She brought her own power, her own press, and refused to sacrifice her identity on the racist altar of “tradition.” The royal family will never forgive her for that.
Modern rage
It’s fitting to see these dynamics play out within the monarchy itself, an institution that shaped them for the rest of the world. I write this article in America, two years after white nationalists carrying crosses and nooses stormed the US Capitol at the sitting President’s urging: A violent coup fueled by the white grievance of people that never got over a black man sitting in the Oval Office.
But this modern rage isn’t new: It traces its lineage back through segregation and Jim Crow, through lynching and enslavement, all the way back to an empire that committed genocide on multiple continents because of a fervent conviction that God ordained them to rule the world as they saw fit.
King James I’s rule oversaw bringing the first enslaved Africans to English colonies, to the city bearing his name. Writing on the monarchy, James was unequivocal: “The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods.”
The coexistence of slavery and monarchy is not incidental: When people believe they are divinely chosen to rule, they will not let other humans’ suffering stand between them and power.
It was the same fervent conviction in their own righteousness with which the British crown executed more than 200 enslaved people during Bussa’s rebellion in 1816 Barbados, for the “crime” of demanding freedom.
More recently, in 1957 the British government rounded up more than a million Kikiyu people in Kenya and put them in concentration camps for “reeducation,” in a brutal campaign they called “Operation Progress.”
I bring up this history because it is not disconnected from the etiquette rules that govern our present. In the US and UK alike, the legacy of slavery and colonisation hangs heavy.
While, obviously, most white folks no longer openly condone enslavement, black people are still treated as a subordinated class.
Black joy is labeled “too much, too loud.” Black skin is simultaneously loathed and objectified. Demands for equality are met with scorn. And when we resist, we are treated as a threat that must be contained. This is the double-bind in which Meghan Markle found herself: A world where she could only be herself by leaving.
In my memoir Fierce Love, I write about joy as resistance. “Resilience and joy don’t come from being false,” I say, “they emerge from looking squarely at the truth of our circumstances, feeling what’s inside authentically,” and then loving ourselves the way that we deserve to be loved.
Sometimes that means fighting for our ability to stay at a table, to demand the respect we should receive. But sometimes it means recognising tables that were not built for us and leaving them entirely.
In Meghan and Harry’s decision to pursue their own joy and an authentic life, they recognized a system that would always treat Meghan as “difficult, rude and abrasive.” They’re building something else, instead.
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If His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects are to begin to mature, and become an identifiable political force; then we must have the courage to examine and audit ourselves as individuals; and as a collective people; and correct our cultural failings whilst encouraging our successes.
We must be courageous enough to explored why we, as a racially and historically identifiable English born people, have failed to flourish as a collective people; or create political presence, or create a desperately required Parliamentary Lobby: with a political creed, and with spokesmen and women dedicated with developing and maturing a creed, which when mature will benefit all of His Majesty’s English Subjects: and England’s Public and Corporate institutions.
For too long the political Left has used the skin-colour injustice endured by African-heritage Subjects to advance their preferred racial: religious, sexual minorities, whilst ignoring and marginalising African-heritage Subjects.
All African-heritage men and women must stop using the Marxist inspired Left -wing slogans such as “white-privilege,” White entitlement,” “misogynoir” “white-supremacy,” “diversity,” and “minority pay-gap,” along with solely accusing Caucasian-heritage people of skin-colour “racism.”
These slogans were not designed by Mr Karl Marx to benefit or help African-heritage Subjects. Indeed, Mr Karl Marx was famous for constantly referring to African-heritage people, using the most derogatory skin-colour language.
Princes Harry’s marriage to an American woman of African-heritage has not been harmonious because his wife is expert at interpretating every sentence and gesture from members of the Royal Family and Royal household as an assault triggered by her African-heritage.
Meghan is clearly familiar with the “anti-racist” creed of the Marxist inspired Political Left.
Prince Harry’s wife stated, she did not experience skin-colour discrimination until she came to England. What an incredible statement from someone born and raised in the United States.
Today, Prince Harry’s wife spends a considerable amount of time accusing the English; the Royal Household and the Royal Family, of every conceivable skin-colour discrimination and segregation; whilst not noticing any skin-colour segregation: discrimination and racism in the country of her birth.
For these reasons, all readers of Prince Harry’s book should be sceptical, and suspicious of Prince Harry and his wife’s ubiquitous claims of racism against the English people; the Royal Household, and the Royal Family.
Chaka Artwell – have you actually read the book? Have you seen the media images like the one of the royal couple leaving the hospital with a monkey and the catchphrase “The New Royal Baby.” You claim that British subjects need to mature to understand that they are to blame for the hundreds of examples of both micro- and macro-aggressions that they navigate on a daily basis, but instead you try to make a dubious connection to Marxism – clearly without reading a word that Prince Harry shared, but relying on the same narrative the media has followed. In the end, you support colonialism and a family that gained their immense wealth through the stealing, buying, and selling of Black bodies. Prince Harry’s wife has not made these accusations – he has. And he is white. Your comment is sexism at its best. This was his book, not hers. Perhaps stop long enough to ask what it is in your life that makes you choose to attack a Black woman for the words and actions of her white husband? Your opinion – and in the end it is just YOUR opinion – ignores the last 600 years of African, British, and American history.
No one cares. Black entitlement and privilege are far more prevalent nowadays than so called “white” ones.