Blankets and racists.
The thrill of the Harry and Meghan interview waned for me the moment they described the Queen as warm and friendly.
“She shared her blanket with me…” cooed Meghan, and went on to describe what a blanket is, (thanks) and how one might put it over their knees to keep warm. (Again, thanks). “I have a very good relationship with my Grandmother….” echoed Harry.
At the beginning of the interview, I’d felt a small measure of excitement, especially when Oprah said “no subject would be off limits”. Fantastic. Let’s have it then.
In fairness I can’t remember where I got the idea this would be a discussion about race, as I don’t think it was promoted that way. But the lure of something revolutionary was what made me tune in, even though I’d initially said I wouldn’t. Not being much of a royalist.
The first thing I noticed was how beautiful Meghan looked. Excellent. We are about to have the lid blown off the monarchy and its going to be by this gorgeous creature. It will be the stuff legends are made of. I hugged my mug of tea and reached for the Jaffa cakes.
What followed was bizarre; there was some stuff about facetiming with the queen and presents for Archie. There was an allegation of an exchange about how dark-skinned Archie would be, (no names) followed up by confirmation that these words weren’t uttered by the queen or by prince Philip. This particular bit of the interview sparked gleeful speculation; “who is the royal racist?”
Erm… the empire is the royal racist. The imperial state is the royal racist.
Oh well, back to Oprah (most conspicuous by her absence in Black Lives Matter) and to Harry and Meghan. Harry implies a cooling of relations between him, Charles and William. He describes how Charles stopped taking his calls.
Okay, so this is a grudge match between a son, his bro and his pops. Made globally public.
Nevertheless, there were issues relevant to us all; Meghan’s disclosure about suicidal ideation showed bravery and importantly gave weight to our conversation about mental health. And if it’s true that she was denied help then it reveals the hypocrisy of royal family members who patronise mental health charities. But that’s no surprise, really.
She shared her appalling experience of the press. Certainly a political matter — the right-wing press runs wild in the UK assassinating the characters of good people (Jeremy Corbyn) abusing and brutalising them. They go unchallenged and they are bullies. They lie to the public and they’re courted by the establishment.
The interview highlighted this, but somehow the light was dappled, falling only partly on the royal family whose ongoing script apparently includes hosting these dishonest, cruel and racist journalists in the palace on a regular basis. A synergy was described between the royals and the press, sounding something like cartels and the police. An indescribably difficult subject for Harry in the context of his mother’s death, and it would have been down to pure skill on Oprah’s part to give the world some measure of both the irony and cruelty here. But the subject was left unexpanded.
As I said, this interview was never promoted as a conversation about race or injustice. Perhaps the reason it was anticipated (and in many ways interpreted) as such is because this is the conversation we in the UK desperately need and still aren’t having.
Perhaps we can take a moment to consider what might have come up if it was?
The person they portray as the cuddly grandma wears a jewel in her crown audaciously named the Star of Africa. It is 532 carats. It is worth 1.4 billion.
It is stolen property.
And it is one jewel in over three thousand crown jewels. You do the maths.
Perhaps not everyone knows each detail of Amritstar massacre, the partitioning of India, the Mau Mau uprising or the Boer concentration camps. I know I don’t. But we walk on streets paved from the proceeds of pillage and plunder. We live with the legacy of colonial superiority which robs countless citizens of fair and just lives. It is a powerful legacy emboldening an illusory belief system and it basically means we are heaving with racists.
On the 8th October 2017, the Queen unlawfully prorogued our parliament to give Boris Johnson freedom to push through his Brexit deal. The man who calls Black people piccanninies. The man who calls Muslim women letterboxes. We’ve all heard the Brexit slogan “take back control”. It spoke to the desires of every racist in the country, ultimately winning the referendum. Just needed one more racist pawprint. Enter Her Majesty… and voila.
If we do want to bring down the monarchy, we’ll have to find another champion though because Harry… well he’s walking the line. Firmly loyal to the continuing fallacy of the kindly grandma, all he’s really done is secure himself as the ‘not-quite-prince’ who has pulled off a ‘not-quite-revolution’.
I remember as a child hearing about how, in the beginning of the 1800’s the enslaved Haitians in their battle for independence burned down their own homes so that soldiers arriving from France couldn’t take over these houses and use them as shelter from the insects and the heat. The French would have to fight the Haitians in the jungle instead.
So on a scale of burning down your own home to let’s say, throwing yourself under the queens horse… (ok, maybe I shouldn’t go there — it’s not like I’m doing either of those things — but you get the idea.)
Yes, the interview was all anyone could talk about, and yes, the British ‘brand’ is now going though the shitter in epic proportions, but revolutionary — no.
The main thing that sticks out for me is the look of bewilderment in Meghan’s eyes. Strange, for a smart, African American to have never thought about who, and what the British Empire is. Her remark about never having ‘googled’ them was extraordinary. Do you have to google them?
It made her come across as someone who married the equivalent of the loch-ness monster and then cried bitter tears when she discovered she couldn’t breathe underwater.
Long before the end of the interview, I’d become irritable. I’d been teased and denied. And I’d finished my Jaffa cakes. Where to turn now? Not for Jaffa cakes, I mean, but for a sniff of change, for a promise of truth?
I’ll sign off by saying I’ve taken solace in a remark made by a friend; “We don’t know what they’re going to do next.”
That’s true, we don’t. So here’s hoping.
