Monday Musings: If A Divorced, Mixed-Race Meghan, Can Marry A British Prince…Then You Are Missing A Trick 

The event was at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, on December 05, 2003, whilst in the presence of The Queen, the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, that the Queen’s husband Prince Philip met with former President  Olusegun Obasanjo and quipped Obasanjo who was dressed in his agbada that “You look like you’re ready for bed”.Whether this statement is intentional racism or just ignorance, we will never know for certain. What is accurate is that UK’s most privileged members seem to be sufficiently lacking in education and are until today, the antithesis of diversity.We have heard of stories of Emma McQuiston, the mixed-heritage socialite who married the heir to the 16th-century Longleat estate, Viscount Weymouth, and how she faced blatant racism, with the viscount’s mother allegedly asking him: “Are you sure about what you’re doing to 400 years of bloodline?” McQuiston told Tatler UK she faced prejudice on multiple fronts. “There’s class,” she said, “and then there’s the racial thing.”So I was unperturbed when the media made it clear when Prince Harry, fifth in line to the British throne and famous flirt, that his relationship with American actress Meghan Markle is scandalous. They came to this conclusion on a number of reasons: she is divorced; she is older (Markle is 35, Harry 32); she’s played raunchy scenes in the US TV series Suits – and her mother is visibly black, with dreadlocks.American, divorced, actress and mixed race, all the four elements mumbled together are incredibly important but could not stop the couple. Harry has always appeared as the most adventurous, honest, modern and open-minded of the royals.He’s had his history with the media yet in all this, he was true to himself and his beliefs not just to the quintessentially British institution or to the teeming loyalists but his own happiness and life. Yet in Meghan he has found a partner that has owned and expressed pride in her heritage, experience of having black heritage in a prejudiced society; of seeing her mother abused with the “N” word, of working in a highly racialised industry as an actress. And in all this, they remained open-minded and understand that change is the only constant thing in life.All around us, institutions and establishments are changing and evolving fast, Robert Mugabe’s government and almost forty years reign was brought down this last week and so we must be reminded that as long as we don’t give in, then change will come. A while ago we had a black african in the white house, soon and very soon their will be a black princess in the British royal family. Whatever institution or obstacle that seem un changeable or immovable, are surely about to evolve if we all understand that the trick to life is keep moving and never stop believing.Photo Credit: Getty

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