The Duchess of Sussex talks about her experience with racism in resurfaced video
A video of the Duchess of Sussex addressing racism has resurfaced, as Black Lives Matter protests continue around the world.
Despite the video originally being from 2012, it still holds the same gravity today, as the world responds to the murder of George Floyd and other black citizens by police. At the time it was filmed, the then-Meghan Markle was a working actress starring in hit legal TV series Suits.
In the video, Meghan - in a T-shirt that reads “I won’t stand for racism” - speaks about how she hopes that the world will be more accepting of each other by the time she becomes a mother.
The duchess welcomed Archie, her first child with Prince Harry, last year. As we know, there’s still so much work that needs to be done.
Read her experience below:
My name's Meghan Markle and I'm here because I think it’s a really important campaign to be a part of. For me, I think it hits a really personal note. I'm bi-racial, most people can’t tell what I'm mixed with and so much of my life has felt like being a fly on the wall. And so some of the slurs that I've heard or the really offensive jokes, or the names, it's just hit me in a really strong way. And then, you know, a couple of years ago I heard someone call my mom the N word. So I think for me, beyond being personally affected by racism, just to see the landscape of what our country is like right now, and certainly the world, and to want things to be better.
Quite honestly, your race is part of what defines you. I think what shifts things is that the world really treats you based on how you look. Certain people don’t look at me and see me as a black woman or a biracial woman. They treat me differently, I think, than they would if they knew what I was mixed with, and I think that that is—I don’t know, it can be struggle as much as it can be a good thing depending on the people that you’re dealing with
Leaving LA was sort of like leaving this bubble where I was used to everything, and had been exposed to everything except for a closed mindedness that I experienced when I traveled outside of where I was from. And I think that in doing that it just really opened my eyes to a mentality that still exists that I thought was backdated to the days of when my grandfather moved our family from Cleveland to LA, and they drove across the country and to stop and get food, whatever kind of place they were going to, and they had to go round the back to get food for the family. You know, I thought that was really isolated to those days that we were past, and sadly they're not.
I am really proud of my heritage on both sides, I’m really proud of where I’ve come from and where I’m going. But yeah, I hope that by the time I have children, that people are even more open-minded to how things are changing and that having a mixed world is what it’s all about. I mean certainly, it makes it a lot more beautiful and a lot more interesting.
Find out what you can do to demand justice for black lives here.
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