SHE’S gone and done it. Meghan Markle has finally given us all something to really drop our jaws over – not the dark colour of her nail polish, not her hand constantly touching her pregnancy bump, not the crossing of her legs (although these were clearly heinous faux pas). No, Markle has finally come out, in that interview, and, to all extents and purposes, accused the British royal family of racism.

There can’t have been many who watched the interview who did not share Oprah Winfrey's shock when Meghan shared that a conversation had taken place between Harry and an unnamed royal where ‘concerns’ about how dark their unborn baby’s skin might be, were mentioned.

Most people’s initial thoughts were ‘how crass’, ‘how thoughtless’, ‘how idiotic’, and it’s interesting that when Harry speaks about the conversation he describes it as ‘awkward’.

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It’s only when he mentioned it to his wife, whose fractious relationship with the press began with the deplorable “Straight Outta Compton” headline, had put up with months of ridiculous, one-sided accusations from the tabloids, was half-way through a pregnancy and already feeling, as she says, lonely and suicidal that the conversation, it seems, took on a more sinister meaning for both him and Meghan.

Before Meghan, Harry had not needed to see life through her eyes or understand what she and other people of colour have to wrestle with on an almost daily basis.

Indeed, let’s not forget that it was a 20-year-old Harry that attended a ‘natives and colonial’ themed party dressed as a member of Rommel’s Africa Korps, compete with a very prominent swastika around his arm.

The Herald:

Harry, having lived that life, and attended those types of events had seen first hand what racism looked like, so when Meghan was treated so appallingly he recognised it for what it was, and crucially – he believed her. But others won't.

The narrative against Meghan is that she’s lying, that she hasn’t said who made the comment so it can’t be true, that the timing doesn’t stack up. The very red tops that creatively build full page articles around ‘an unnamed insider’, and ‘a source close to the family’ have the actual gall to get exercised because she and Harry chose not to name this person.

As the parent of two biracial boys I’d have conversations with family members about what the babies might look like, but even my dear in-laws who grew up in a very non-multicultural environment never asked me or their son about what ‘colour’ they might be.

They would instinctively have known that that sort of question held racial and racist undertones. In fact, now that I think about it, it was more my parents who were surprised when one baby was born brown-skinned and brown-eyed and the other white-skinned and blue-eyed courtesy of their father’s DNA and the 1.4% of my DNA that’s from the Orkney Islands and 4% from Scandinavia.

We are all multi-racial – that’s what makes this whole situation ridiculous, if it didn’t have such serious, life-changing implications for the people who are living this every day because their genetic make-up randomly dictates that they have brown or black skin.

The whole saga was sadly to be expected. The arrival of a biracial women whose grandparents had worked in a hotel for whites only, into one of the most reported upon, photographed and click-baitey families in the world required thoughtful preparation, education and support.

Everyone apparently welcomed Meghan, the press and commentators swung between outright prejudice to ‘not seeing colour’.

But the family weren’t prepared. Harry wasn’t prepared and even Meghan wasn’t prepared. She and Harry momentarily were blinded – it happens when you’re in love. You’re swept up in the exquisite joy and excitement of the possibilities of the life you might share together, so much so that you forget about the potential ugliness.

This matters because elements of what we are seeing have been, are and will be replicated in families across the country. I have many mixed race friends for whom this story resonates and who are frankly relived that Meghan has spoken her truth.

The mixed race community are the fastest growing ethnic group in the UK. We all need to learn from Harry and Meghan’s experience. Older family members with attitudes straight outta colonial times are not always being challenged by 40 or 50 year olds because they profess to being ‘colour blind’.

It sounds kinda cosy – “I don’t care what colour you are, so long as you can do the job,” “I don’t think of you as coloured, “It doesn’t happen here.”

But the result of this is that when there are racist undertones, language, headlines or weird conversations about how brown your baby might be, no-one knows what to do because they’ve been so busy being ‘colour blind’ that to challenge those views is hard.

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It means acknowledging that there are problems around race, and the only way to solve that is to be actively anti-racist. With this interview the Sussexes have made the difficult decision to lay that conversation bare, to start a discussion in the hope that other inter-racial couples can be forearmed and forewarned and, hopefully, in a better place with their families than Meghan and Harry are.

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