Category: Hot Takes in News/Media

Racial (Dis)Harmony: The Overestimated Post-racial Power of Meghan Markle

Published on by shantelgbuggs

This is a repost from Bitch Media. I am reposting my pieces from that platform to this blog due to the fact that Bitch Media closed in 2022. In the event that the platform no longer archives their written work, it will remain here on my personal blog. This piece was originally published on December 1, 2017.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry

Photo credit: Twitter/newsjsBW

This week, the engagement of American actress Meghan Markle to British royal Prince Harry set social media ablaze.

Race is at the center of this internet firestorm: Markle is biracial, with a Black mother and white father. As a Black and white mixed-race woman who studies multiracial identity and interracial relationships, the online debates over Markle and her fiancé have been both perplexing and unsurprising. Over the last year, Markle’s racial background has drawn negative press in Britain. Last November, Prince Harry publicly called out the barely veiled racism and sexism in the media coverage of their relationship. Despite this treatment, their engagement is viewed as an opportunity to change what it means to be British and royal, with American fans celebrating a “real Black princess” who will bring #BlackGirlMagic to the royal family and the seemingly stale royal wedding traditions. Several essays have been written about what Markle’s presence means for the British monarchy and the broader racial politics of the West.

Hiding under the surface of the more hopeful pieces—namely Afua Hirsch’s argument that their union will alter race in Britain forever—is an assumed post-racial exceptionalism often projected onto mixed-race people and interracial couplings. As British comedian Gina Yashere noted in a Channel 4 roundtable interview, Markle is “not exotic” and “not from a tribe in the Amazon,” but is merely “an American.” The thread of simultaneous exoticness and mundaneness that permeates the discussion of Markle, as well as the suggestion that her marriage to Prince Harry will be Britain’s “Obama moment,” implies that multiracial people can foster racial harmony by merging supposedly disparate racial backgrounds. In my own research, I have referred to this framing around mixed-race women as the construction of an utopic subject: a figure that embodies an idealized racial future where race is no longer relevant, presumably achieved through interracial sex, marriage, and procreation.

This notion is best summed up by the iconic November 1993 TIME cover story featuring the computer-generated “Eve,” the so-called new face of America. Within the contradictory logics of alleged multicultural societies like the United States and the United Kingdom, Markle is exotic by virtue of her Blackness and her racial ambiguity. Yet she also is framed as unremarkable for these same reasons; for some, Markle’s Blackness is nothing to celebrate because she’s part of a Eurocentric-beauty-standard conforming, biracial-identifying package. Yashere’s comments also call attention to the ways Markle’s biracial background has been framed as inherently radical; her infiltration of the white establishment—the literal figureheads of the British Empire and colonial power—is (jokingly?) viewed by some as an intentional undermining of whiteness.

Yet British academics have suggested that Markle will not have the opportunity to figuratively shake the table because she will likely be pressured to avoid foregrounding her biracial identity and pass into whiteness. There is also the uncomfortable fact that African and Caribbean nations are still suffering from the colonial legacies of the British and other European powers; given these legacies, is it even reasonable to expect Black people in the diaspora to celebrate this marriage? While Markle has yet to explicitly make any claims that connect her race to the future of Britain, her 2015 Elle essay is telling. Within it, she notes the pressure from her teacher to identify solely as white, since “that is what she looks like” and her subsequent confusion since she envisioned her mother being hurt by that choice. Her adamant embrace of a biracial, rather than Black, identity has been met with joy from some mixed-race people (who feel that biracial people are underrepresented in media) and ire from some Black Americans who feel that she is either distancing herself from Blackness or that she is just more of the same light-skinned, normative representation that Hollywood has provided for decades. Others question whether marrying a royal is representation at all.

It is unlikely Markle will ever hold the title of princess or queen, given that Prince Harry is now fifth in line to throne; instead, she will be named a Duchess once Harry receives his title on their wedding day. Plus, Markle is hardly the first Black or mixed-race woman, let alone the first American, to wed royalty. So why has her engagement inspired such strong reactions? Thanks to the scourge that is normative gender-binary socialization, many young girls and women are inundated with popular culture images and stories that privilege a princess fantasy, wherein they get their heteronormative happily ever after with the handsome man of their dreams. Disney has based much of its business model on selling the princess narrative, slowly diversifying its roster of cinematic princesses with the likes of Jasmine, Tiana, Moana, and Mulan (who was not royalty and never married a prince). Though Tiana was celebrated as a Black Disney princess, even her portrayal drew critique because she’s a frog for the majority of the film. While it’s easy to chalk up the excitement over Markle’s engagement to a need for levity and joy in such dark times, it also illustrates the investment in even surface-level representation and the continued power of the notion of the princess, particularly the idea that joining an establishment like the British royal family is an achievement on its own.

Meghan Markle

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Meghan Markle (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The underlying tension regarding skin color privilege and beauty aesthetics further complicates this notion of representation. Rachel Zane, Markle’s character on Suits was a biracial paralegal-turned-lawyer who made visible the workplace experiences of women of color; however, representation in scripted media is not necessarily transferrable to a royal wedding. The true representative value of Markle’s engagement is that it provides a high-profile case of what interracial relationships can look like for mixed-race people. Despite the attention paid to the growing mixed-race population in the United States, it is uncommon to see romantic relationships involving multiracial people reflected in pop culture. Advertisements featuring interracial couples or families continue to draw backlash, and even Markle noted the importance of her parents combining doll sets for her so that she could have a doll family that looked like her own.

Yes, there are a number of mixed-race actors and actresses that play romantic love interests; many of these characters, however, are written as monoracial. This is especially the case with a majority of films and television shows that feature Black women as the protagonists; actresses like Halle Berry, Paula Patton, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Zendaya, and Amandla Stenberg perpetuate an image of Black women as only light-skinned. Even the social science research is limited in its understanding of the relationship practices and experiences of mixed-race adults, though some online dating research suggests that just being mixed with white increases a person’s desirability and attractiveness. My own research indicates that there may be a tendency among mixed-race women to seek white partners, a trend some scholars conclude is a result of the “honorary whiteness” some multiracial people have access to.

For multiracial women who are unambiguously women of color, the quality of their dating experiences differs significantly from women who are more white presenting. In fact, women who are mixed with Black and who are darker-skinned end up performing extra work to “vet” potential partners and determine if they are worth dating based on racial politics. Thus, Markle and Prince Harry provide a reference point for those who do (or don’t) see value in interracial relationships, but also give mixed-race people in interracial relationships a way to see themselves. The relevance of such visibility seems greater at present, given the waves of white nationalist sentiment that demonize such pairings. While it would be irresponsible to think that this marriage will directly result in any substantive social change, it is also important to not dismiss the power of symbols, no matter how surface level they may be.

[Black] bodies are not monuments.

Published on by shantelgbuggs

It has been 24 hours or so since I first came across an opinion piece from a poet and academic proclaiming her body a “monument to the Confederacy.”

I have continued to dwell on her opening line: “I have rape-colored skin.” Her choice to call her body and skin a monument to the “legacy of the Confederacy.” The fervid responses from colleagues and people I admire calling the piece powerful while others call(ed) it deeply uncomfortable, upsetting, gut-churning. My own reactions of dismay and alarm and later, confusion, disrupted my sleep and have felt like a burden taking up space in the back of my mind all day.

What does it mean to call a body a monument — specifically a Black body — particularly a monument to the dehumanization, brutalization, and exploitation of our Black predecessors? What does it mean to offer up how that trauma and horror of colonization, of chattel slavery, of Jim Crow is embedded and embodied and how that “legacy” should not just be acknowledged but also lends legitimacy to Black people’s calls to tear down actual monuments to the Confederacy? Who is the target audience when one says they have “rape-colored skin” (as though only light-skinned Black people were produced from these assaults) or that they have “rebel-grey blue blood coursing [their] veins” (as though the racial ideologies of our Black ancestors’ rapists, abusers, exploiters, oppressors are genetic and inherited via blood)? Who are you trying to shock and awe, to convince to join in the destruction of these mounds of stone and steel meant to symbolize the indomitable spirit of the white South?

Many of my favorite writers have thought long and hard about what it means for bodies to be sites of contestation. That the existence of people we in the United States currently identify as “multiracial” or “mixed-race” pre-dates the so-called Loving Generation. That their bodies symbolize(d) histories of conquest, increases in property value, or even contamination of whiteness seems to undergird Williams’ argument of “body as monument.” We — as a settler colonial society — certainly need to think about the ways who we are today and the lives we live, the things we believe and value, are a product of the relations between people who understood themselves as supreme human beings (entitled to the land and bodies of other people) and those they deemed racial “others” who are/were understood not just as lesser but quite literally inhuman. We need to contend with what it means for people to have involuntary “familial” connections borne out of assault and abuse, for those histories to inform present-day iterations of economic, political, and social assault and abuse.

If Black bodies are not monuments to the Confederacy, what are they? Are they not monuments to Black people’s perseverance, love, community, creativity, imagination? To hope? Why frame our bodies as sites of pain, biologically tied to white “ancestors”? Why make any biological arguments about non-white people at all, knowing how fraught that is?

I remain unconvinced that reducing race to the body, to the genes that make up our DNA (and when combined in particular ways may favor certain characteristics), is the way to motivate white people to see that Black people, and really any colonized peoples, are human and deserving of respect. That our bodies and the harm bodies like ours have experienced in the past will inspire white people to end their desire to leave up physical places of honor for people who were so invested in owning other human beings that they seceded and fought a losing war in order to protect their “property.” But it is not only the legacy of the Confederacy that must be destroyed but that of the entire United States — Confederates weren’t the only ones holding people in bondage or working to keep Black people from gaining any semblance of access to basic human rights. Even the leaders who are lauded as the “fathers” of this country kept Black people as property, believed many of the same things their Confederate brethren believed (thus why we have so many Confederate statues or buildings named for its leaders in states that weren’t even in the Confederacy). I am as appalled at Williams’ framing of her biological connection to the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan as I am by the defense of Ulysses Grant as “one of the good ones” because he emancipated the singular enslaved African that he inherited through marriage.

Rooting moral logics in being for or against the Confederacy alone leaves a lot to be desired.

There is no such thing as “one of the good ones” when you owned other people and participated in the massacre of indigenous peoples and the theft of their land. There is no such thing as being genetically white or Black, because to be white or Black is about social and political relation. There is no such thing as an ancestral relation between us and the people who forcibly took land, bodily autonomy, rights, cultural practice, and family from our Black predecessors simply because there are “blood ties” or shared chromosomal markers. We are within our rights to demand the removal and eradication of statues, of named buildings, of flags, of songs, of awards, of all lingering traces of the Confederacy not because of shared history or biology…but because we wish to imagine and bring forth a world that rejects the valorization of people and ideologies that diminish the humanity of anyone. Destroying the vestiges of the Confederacy should not be the end of this fight. Everything this country was built on must go, too.