(Photo: CCL)
By Millie Simon – Contributor
I don’t know about you, but every other Tiktok on my for you page consists of the horrifying reminder that Prince Harry’s “…penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatised…”.
From the initial separation from the Royal Family in 2020, through to the enlightening Oprah interview and Netflix documentary, and finally to the recent release of Harry’s autobiography, Spare, the Harry and Meghan drama has certainly divided the country in a way that makes dinner with your grandparents, fairly awkward.
Dismissing all the TMIs and irrelevant family gossip from Harry’s autobiography, there is a dark undertone to the ongoing psychodrama between the two equally powerful parties.
First of all, it can’t be denied that the media has certainly fuelled racist rhetoric about Meghan Markle. The Mail Online published a headline that claimed she was “(almost) straight outta Compton”, whilst the The Daily Star questioned why Harry would “marry into gangster royalty?”. These are clear examples that the right leaning British newspapers used Markle’s biracial background as a weapon to stoke up racism.
One revelation included the Royal Family’s complacency towards the racism Markle faced.
In the Netflix documentary, Harry and Meghan highlighted the Royal Family’s reluctance to condemn the racism Markle was facing from The Mail Online and The Daily Star. Furthermore, in the Oprah interview, the Sussexes alluded to a conversation between a senior Royal figure over the colour of their unborn child.
There is always an argument that this conversation never occurred.
But looking at the Royal Family’s deep rooted history in racism, it’s not completely outlandish to assume race had a key role to play in the Royal Family’s treatment of Markle.
Despite what Piers Morgan says, it is possible for the leader of the Commonwealth (formerly known as the British Empire that colonised and dominated up to ¼ of the world, including but not limited to, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Eastern Ghana, Gambia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh ) to be racist.
It’s accepted that the Royals still maintain large amounts of wealth acquired from the brutality of slavery and colonisation. Despite this, the Crown repeatedly ignores calls from previous colonies to pay reparations for their role in enhancing the slave trade. This also includes the Koh-i-Noor diamond found in the “Crown Jewels” which has been continuously asked to be returned by Pakistan and India.
As Keith Magee rightfully acknowledges in a Guardian article, the Royal Family have always avoided confronting their role in Britain’s colonial past and are weary in accepting the brutal fact that they continue to take advantage from the horrors of colonialism.
And whilst these issues seem important enough to make the headlines, the British press persisted in scrutinising the way Markle cradled her stomach whilst pregnant, calling it “vanity [and] acting”, when the same newspaper praised Kate Middleton for “tenderly cradling her baby bump”.
And even though the British press fixate on the trivial rather than important news items, the British public still obsesses about the latest intel on the Royal Family.
Why when the Royal Family and/or Harry and Meghan release new information, do we, and the British media, go slightly feral for it?
Perhaps it’s a distraction to the miserable events happening in our own lives. The drama of another family may be an easy distraction for the real problems happening in the world, including the cost of living crisis.
It is interesting that mainstream media such as the BBC feel it is appropriate to give the Harry and Megahn drama “excessive coverage”. Whilst at the time of this specific coverage on Harry and Megahn, seven million people were waiting for NHS treatment, over one million more people faced poverty in the last winter and four million children suffered from food poverty.
It’s almost as if the psychodrama is a useful tool for the establishment to use, in order to distract working class people from the current failures of our Conservative government to address the issue of poverty, inequality and injustice.
The York Politics Review 