Take a look at the headlines from across the world today to see how others see us now. Then contrast the shock and the sympathy being expressed for Meghan and her family beyond our shores, with the simmering contempt still being incubated and transmitted by the toxic parts of our tabloid press.
What last summer – the summer of Black Lives Matter and the toppling of Edward Colston's statue – revealed so clearly was that millions of people in Britain regard racism as an American, rather than a British, problem. In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, journalists and commentators, in newspapers and on television, repeatedly dismissed any suggestion that the movement that had risen up in the US was of any relevance to the experiences of black people in the UK. "You're not putting America and the UK on the same footing," Emily Maitlis told George the Poet on Newsnight.
Today, despite these denials, millions of people in the US and elsewhere are busy discussing Britain's very real problems with race and racism, as never before. Yet while headlines around the world focus on the claims that questions were asked within the royal family about the skin colour of a then unborn child, parts of the British media remain committed to another project. Most black people who have worked in one of our big institutions, or stepped into the public eye, are well aware of the fundamental law of racial physics that operates in modern Britain. The terms of this law are simple and universal: they state that a white person or institution accused of racism has suffered far more than a black person who has been the victim of racism.
Within hours of the royal interview, and in accordance with that fundamental law, Piers Morgan accused Meghan and Harry of speaking untruths and suggesting that "everybody in the royal family is a white supremacist" – an ugly tabloid exaggeration appended to a culture-war dog-whistle. The fact that the same programme turned (alongside other guests) for comment to Megyn Kelly, an infamous Fox News presenter with a dubious record on race issues (her show was cancelled after she made controversial comments about blackface for which she apologised), is as telling as it is disturbing; a sign of where we as a country may be heading.
Dismissing the idea that race was a factor in the tabloid hounding of Meghan or in the neglect she appears to have suffered at the hands of palace officials – like denials of racism elsewhere in British life – performs a necessary function. It allows those inclined to do so to cling to the belief that we are, as Laurence Fox gushed last year, "the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe". In order to deny the role racism has played in the hounding of Meghan, Andrew Pierce of the Daily Mail went as far as to strip her of her racial identity. "Do you look at her … and see a black woman? Because I don't. I see a very attractive woman," said Pierce, during an astonishing radio call-in segment on his LBC show, in which he dismissed racism as a factor in the mistreatment of Meghan while simultaneously exhibiting exactly the sort of racism he claims does not exist.
Be in no doubt this is the most serious crisis 'the firm' has faced since the death of Princess Diana
When racism is acknowledged in Britain, it is portrayed not as a structural, social problem, but as a minor, if regrettable, fact of life – one that black people have to tolerate and learn to live with. Appeals for help or support are often mischaracterised as requests for special treatment. That attitude, or something close to it, appears to have prevailed within the institution that royal correspondents respectfully call "the palace" and what Meghan and others call "the firm". "What was different for me was the race element," said Harry about the treatment his wife has endured. That difference appears to have been invisible to the keepers of tradition and the guardians of protocol.
Be in no doubt this is the most serious crisis "the firm" has faced since the death of Princess Diana – according to some, since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. But this is not just a crisis for the royal family – but for Britain itself. Yet rather than use this moment to embark upon an honest national conversation about race and racism there will, I fear, be further demonisation of Meghan and Harry. Trapped in denial – about everyday racism, structural racism, slavery and empire – there are parts of British society that appear incapable not just of change but even of its necessary precursor: honest self-reflection.
The truth is that the task of living up to the image that we have twice projected across the world, and becoming the country of the 2012 Games, a land with a black "princess" and a mixed-race child in the line of royal succession, was simply too difficult. It would have involved controlling our out-of-control press and replacing platitudes about multiculturalism and delusions of being a "tolerant, lovely country" with hard self-reflection. It would have demanded a reckoning with the difficult truths of our imperial history.
When Meghan and Harry abandoned Britain and gave up their lives as members of the royal family, they made their choice. By allowing the press to drive them out and standing by the tabloids and the phone-in hosts rather than Meghan and her family, we, as a country, appear to have made ours.
David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster
prince Harry in Nazi dress
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