Meghan and Harry damaged the Royal Family with their hurtful smears about racism
|Published
By Douglas Gibson
The right to equality of colour, culture, gender, sexual preference, religion and especially race has been dealt many grievous blows in recent times.
An example is that the constant accusations of racism, sometimes, where racism does not exist, are rapidly cheapening and damaging the fight against racism.
The British Royal Family (RF) is the latest victim of such a smear by Harry and Meghan (H&M) in their television interview. A few hundred million viewers were given misleading and false information.
The RF has been smeared as being racist because one unnamed member of the RF wondered aloud about whether an unborn baby would be darker (and look more like its mixed-race mother) or lighter, (like its ginger-haired, white father). If a member of my family supported the ANC, would it make ours an ANC family?
The smear is more grievous, given the obvious welcome Meghan received from the RF, (Harry expressed his pleased surprise at this), the fairy-tale wedding that followed, the Prince of Wales escorting Meghan down the aisle in the absence of her (white) father and the warm and appropriate treatment accorded to her (black) mother and, thereafter, to Meghan herself by the queen.
Add to this the record of friendship between members of the family and people of colour, stretching from Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth, whose warm regard for members of the Commonwealth and for people like Nelson Mandela and Michelle Obama is well known.
Compounding the hurtful smear of the RF was the outright lie (it can be nothing else and can surely not be ascribed to ignorance) to the effect that Archie, their son, was not a prince because he was of mixed race.
Surely Harry knows the great-grandchildren who are in the direct line of succession (William’s children) are styled prince or princess? Other great-grandchildren, six of them, out of a total of nine, about to be 10, are not princes or princesses. This has nothing to do with their race, Archie’s race or that of his sister, to be born soon. The smug and suffering look on Meghan’s face and the incredulous look on Oprah Winfrey’s were both entirely misplaced.
Not said, was Archie will become a prince when Charles ascends the throne and when Harry dies, Archie will become the Duke of Sussex.
Several other aspects of the interview were unsatisfactory or unbelievable. H&M left their active working royal status and proclaimed their desire to be independent financially. Now they whine because they, both multimillionaires, living in their $14 million (about R210m) house, have to pay for their own security.
Unbelievable is the story that Meghan, an expectant mother contemplating suicide, was denied psychological help. If Meghan was unable to do it, surely Harry, as a good and concerned husband, could have instructed his private secretary to telephone any one of a hundred psychiatrists or psychologists in London to request that the professional come to their home to consult and counsel Meghan? One wonders if any of them would have refused the opportunity.
Lies and improbabilities, all aimed at doing damage to the Royal Family, as they have, have also set back the fight against racism.
Poor Harry.
*Douglas Gibson is a former opposition chief whip and ambassador to Thailand. His website is: douglasgibsonsouthafrica.com
**The views expressed here are not those of The Star or IOL.
The Star