32 THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020
“native and colonial”-themed party.)
Tominey said, “This narrative of ‘the
press and the public have been attacking
us,’ and ‘there’s a racial undertone,’ and
Prince Harry talking about ‘unconscious
bias’—people are scratching their heads
and saying, ‘Well, last time I checked,
nobody I know ever dressed up as a Nazi
for a fancy-dress party.’ ”
Dickie Arbiter, the royal commen-
tator, told me, “For goodness’ sake, the
Queen is head of the Commonwealth,
and the majority of the Commonwealth
is other races—African, Asian, you name
it.” The fact that some of the Queen’s
best subjects are black is perhaps not
the strongest defense of the royal in-
stitution, which is notably lacking in
diversity. Princess Michael of Kent,
who is married to one of the Queen’s
cousins, retired a favorite “blackamoor”
brooch, featuring a gilded image of an
African man, only after being publicly
criticized for wearing it to the Christ-
mas banquet at which Prince Harry
first introduced his fiancée to his wider
family. Whatever Princess Michael’s
views on race may be, the fact that no-
body at the Palace had told her to bin
the brooch years earlier suggests a cul-
ture of obliviousness.
Not all the scorn levelled at Markle
has been racist; some of it has been
merely anti-American. When Allison
Pearson, the Telegraph columnist, deri-
sively took note of the Duchess’s “newly-
whitened smile,” she was partaking
in a long-standing British tradition of
equating American dental hygiene
with American cultural inferiority. Yet
some of the coverage of Markle has un-
equivocally been racist, with the gutter
tone set early by a Daily Mail headline,
in November, 2016, announcing that
“harry’s girl is (almost) straight
outta compton.” The accompanying
article claimed that the Los Angeles
neighborhood where Meghan’s mother,
Doria Ragland, lived was “plagued by
crime and riddled with street gangs.”
A double standard was clearly in effect
for Markle: in 2011, nobody at the Pal-
ace seems to have complained when
Kate Middleton scented Westminster
Abbey with orange-blossom candles.
Even positive commentary about the
Sussex marriage, or celebrations of Mar-
kle’s charms, was often racially inflected.
The coverage of the couple’s relation-
ship exposed the fact that, among some
gatekeepers of British culture, it still
comes as a surprise to learn that char-
acterizing a woman of color as “exotic”
does not amount to a compliment.
Gary Younge, a sociology professor
at Manchester University and a for-
mer columnist for the Guardian, said,
“Meghan does seem to be an inadequate
vessel for the rage that has been rained
on her.” Moreover, he went on, pundits
who claimed that the marriage of Harry
and Meghan proved how far Britain
had come were too self-congratulatory.
“Mixed-race relationships are neither
new nor rare in Britain, and so it shows
how far behind the Royal Family is, if
anything,” Younge said.
Much like President Barack Obama,
Markle is a singular figure who was
misguidedly heralded as a representa-
tive symbol of progress. “On a very basic
level, she doesn’t come from our nation’s
dysfunction,” Younge noted. In the U.K.,
the legacy of the nation’s colonial his-
tory is omnipresent, and there is a less
well-established black middle class than
exists in America. Younge said, “Most
black Britons of Meghan’s age—their
grandparents or parents would have been
bus drivers or nurses or train drivers.
They would have had working-class jobs,
and the Royal Family never marries any-
body with a working-class background.”T
he Duke and Duchess of Sussex
made their final appearance as ac-
tive members of the Royal Family on the
afternoon of March 9th, at the sixty-
second annual Commonwealth Service.The celebration, held at Westminster
Abbey, is attended by various members
of the Royal Family, and marks the
Queen’s role as head of the Common-
wealth, an association of fifty-four na-
tions, most of which are former British
colonies. In 2018, Harry was appointed
president of the charitable Queen’s Com-
monwealth Trust; last year, Markle wasnamed its vice-president. When the cou-
ple became engaged, they spoke with en-
thusiasm about the idea of spending the
better part of their time working on be-
half of the Commonwealth. So far, they
have indicated that they will maintain
their positions with the charity.
That morning, royal fans started gath-
ering along Broad Sanctuary, the road
that wends past Westminster Abbey to-
ward Parliament Square. In the square,
the flags of the Commonwealth coun-
tries fluttered against a low, silvered sky.
Claire Aston, a Londoner in her seven-
ties, had been there since early morn-
ing. Aston, a former dental nurse in the
Women’s Royal Air Force, sat on a raised
concrete wall, using her copy of the Daily
Telegraph as insulation from the cold
granite. Aston was an old hand: in 2011,
she spent three nights sleeping on a yoga
mat, in order to have a front-row view,
when the Duke and Duchess of Cam-
bridge were married. “I saw everything, ”
she told me. “I saw Pippa Middleton’s
lovely bum.” For Harry and Meghan’s
wedding, in Windsor, she spent only one
night outside. “That was the last time I
saw Harry,” she said, as if talking about
a grandson who was too busy to visit.
A group of smartly dressed teen-agers
made their way to the entrance to the
Abbey. They represented the youth group
of a South London church affiliated
with the Eternal Sacred Order of Cher-
ubim and Seraphim, a Nigerian denom-
ination. Sarah Arute, a church leader,
told me that she was excited when Mar-
kle joined the Royal Family: “I felt that
there was hope for the future—that the
Royal Family was opening up a space
for the less in society, so that we have a
voice.” She was happy to see Markle
that day, regardless of the personal
choices she and Harry had made. “They
are still royals, even if they are not here,”
Arute said. “Did you see how she looked
since she has been away? Radiant.”
When the black cars bearing mem-
bers of the Royal Family approached
the Abbey’s entrance, there was a flut-
ter of anticipation and a raising of cell
phones. First came the Earl and Count-
ess of Wessex—“Who’s that?” the crowd
murmured—and then the Duke and
Duchess of Sussex. Markle, in a vivid-
green dress with a cape and a matching
fascinator, gave a little wave in the di-
rection of the crowd. Harry, who had