It is the same with racism. Many black people read the same papers you do, consume the same media you do, have the the same politicians you do and we see, hear and read the discriminatory language. We hear how people talk about certain people in the public eye and even though they don’t call them anything inflammatory we know why. Just like you know why something is happening because you’re a woman - sometimes we know that things are happening because of race. It’s a really fun head scratcher as a black woman trying to figure out sometimes if something is happening because I’m a woman or if it’s happening because I’m black 🤣.
People of colour are and can be critical of Meghan - but there’s a tone that is sometimes difficult to escape from certain people. You must admit that some of the language to discuss Meghan is very gendered - believe us when we say that some of the language also prejudiced.
I thought this was a very thoughtful and interesting post skullbabe, as your posts generally are (even if I don’t agree with them!) and I absolutely don’t want to to dismiss your views, I just wanted to add some of my perspectives onto them. I am of white heritage, but I am a woman, an immigrant to the UK and not the same class of the royals (I’m not alone there, I imagine! 😀).
I completely accept that some of the treatment Meghan received was because she is mixed race - the Straight Outta Compton headlines, Danny Baker’s offensive tweet, the fact that the Mail even had a story of BNP people being vile about her to run.
But for those of us who have watched UK royal coverage for more than the last few years, it becomes well nigh impossible to draw any lines after that. The coverage is sexist and misogynist - all women who have married into the royal family (all the royal women, in fact) have received that. As the press cycles turn they have all been too staid, too unattractive too fat, too thin, too sexy, too frumpy, too fashion-driven, they have spent too much, they have had too many holidays, they have been too frivolous, too dour, too quiet, too ebullient - you name it.
The married-ins have also received classist abuse - they are too common, their families are too common, they have embarrassing relations, they have dreadful middle-class habits, they make protocol errors all the time, they don’t like country pursuits…
Those who have left the Royal family have been pilloried for trading on their titles, doing tacky ventures like flogging products, commercial endorsements or writing risible books to earn money.
There have only been a few foreign additions, and they too have been too foreign, too stuck-up, thought they were better than the actual family etc (I’m thinking of Marie-Christine and Princess Marina here - Brigitte Gloucester seems to me to be the exception, though I may well be proved wrong). Wallis Simpson definitely got the anti- American, anti-divorcee snobbishness in absolute droves.
Those who have done tell-alls to the Press have been pilloried (Charles, Diana and Sarah Ferguson before now). They have had their privacy invaded to a truly horrific extent (Charles, Camilla, Diana, William Kate & Harry). They have been absolutely harassed by paparazzi, been the victims of outright scams - and all of this is just me doing a mind dump, no actual research.
Against that background, it is very hard for long-term royal watchers to look at this and think the only factor at play in Meghan’s experience is racism. That demonstrably wasn’t a factor for any of the above experiences.
(And before everyone says: but the avocados! I have several times expressed my view that the fact that the media has now moved onto a clickbait model rather than a physical harassment model meant Meghan’s name was added into as many articles as possible in order to get as many readers as possible to click on them. The excessive headline coverage is not remotely followed by excessive content - critical or otherwise - about her in the actual stories, and was a function of her high profile and the numbers of clicks mention of her drove. Obviously, we can’t compare what kind of clickbait coverage Diana would have garnered in her prime, since she was dead long before the online age. But given how no other royal has ever sold copy like Diana did, I can well imagine she would have had exactly the same experience).