(pre-Duchess) Meghan Markle's 2015 Essay on Being Biracial

Elle ^ | July 2015 | Meghan Markle

[CondoleezzaProtege]

"...When I was about seven, I had been fawning over a boxed set of Barbie dolls. It was called The Heart Family and included a mom doll, a dad doll, and two children. This perfect nuclear family was only sold in sets of white dolls or black dolls. I don't remember coveting one over the other, I just wanted one. On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, there I found my Heart Family: a black mom doll, a white dad doll, and a child in each colour. My dad had taken the sets apart and customised my family."

"...Fast-forward to the seventh grade... There was a mandatory census I had to complete in my English class – you had to check one of the boxes to indicate your ethnicity: white, black, Hispanic or Asian...I didn't tick a box. I left my identity blank...When I went home that night, I told my dad what had happened. He said the words that have always stayed with me: 'If that happens again, you draw your own box."

"I was home in LA on a college break when my mom was called the 'N' word. We were leaving a concert and she wasn't pulling out of a parking space quickly enough for another driver. My skin rushed with heat as I looked to my mom. Her eyes welling with hateful tears, I could only breathe out a whisper of words, so hushed they were barely audible: 'It's OK, Mommy.' I was trying to temper the rage-filled air permeating our small silver Volvo. Los Angeles had been plagued with the racially charged Rodney King and Reginald Denny cases just years before, when riots had flooded our streets, filling the sky with ash that flaked down like apocalyptic snow..."

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Partisan political differences aside, I thought this essay struck a right tone unlike so much other stuff out there.

[miss marmelstein]

Racialists have been complaining about poor Barbie when I was still playing with her. More fake news from the Duchess who will soon be seen on Mustique getting her toes sucked by a ball boy.

[Jeff Chandler]

Perhaps, but most of us are burned out with discussions about race. We’re just tired of hearing about it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I thought she expressed herself gracefully. If everybody could do that, we’d all feel free to breathe.

[miss marmelstein]

Eye roll.

[DanielleLavender]

I think this story was good, however I am past the point of no return hearing about race. I am now afraid to talk to black people and avoid them. They seem like a bomb that will go off at the slightest thing.

[miss marmelstein]

Boo hoo hoo on the Duchess who has fallen into a honey pit until she blows up like all the others who were not of royal birth - Diana and Sarah Ferguson being the prime examples as well as all the ex-husbands like Mark Phillips.

Pretty soon poor old Phillip is going to make a remark about her coffee-colored skin and all hell is going to break loose, lol.

[montag813]

Surprisingly thoughtful and well written. I especially like how she mentions both Rodney King and Reginald Denny in the same sentence.

[BenLurkin]

Meghan Markle doesn’t understand Prince Harry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxWeWbrzqA8

[HonkyTonkMan]

Sadly every example she shared is about race. The left is obsessed with race. It’s like there is no room for anything else....not love, not compassion, not skill, not character - it’s sad because they miss so much of the beauty of life.

[Paulie]

Does Prince Harry have buyer’s remorse yet?

[NorthMountain]

the Duchess who will soon be seen on Mustique getting her toes sucked by a ball boy.

ROFL!!!

[originalbuckeye]

Sorry to disagree. She is a gold digger. She is on her third husband and has reached the pinnacle of wealth, so she may stay with him. He is none too bright and neither is she. I am embarrassed that she’s an American. And no, I don’t care that she is 1/4 Black. But she will likely be talking about that aspect and ONLY that aspect until she dies. She is a soap opera grade actress and she appealed to Harry with her racial stories and he was besotted. They deserve each other.

[j.havenfarm]

What? You don’t want to “have a conversation about race”?

[Intolerant in NJ]

...many households may never have had a black person in their house as a guest, or someone biracial. Well, now there are a lot us on your TV and in your home with you...I was looking for the rest of it - "so nyah, nyah, nyah, get used to it" - and there's where I confess my sensitivity comes in - people should be allowed to interact with whomever they want, regardless of race - but they shouldn't have interactions forcefed to them, and that's what I'm getting from my TV lately, especially the commercials - to watch the TV ads, this is no longer a country with about 12% blacks - it is at least 50-50 black-white - it seems all white grandparents have a black grandchild, every couple is biracial, every social gathering is exquisitely balanced in its makeup of whites and blacks -
The Asian guy has a McDonald's hamburger and is left speechless by how delicious it is - the white guy has a McDonald's hamburger, and can't speak to say how good it is - it takes two blacks, Charles Barkley and Gabrielle Union, to show up and find just the right words to eloquently tell us how great those hamburgers are -
The attractive black woman sitting on her just- delivered Raymour and Flanigan furniture smiles to herself as she looks out the window and watches the dumb white couple next door struggle to assemble their new furniture, obviously purchased someplace not Raymour and Flanigan -
The attractive black woman in the Liberty Mutual ad tells you firmly that if your insurance company doesn't pay off the way they should, you clearly bought your insurance from the wrong company, while the dumb white guy in another ad gets so mad at the money he wasted with his not Liberty Mutual insurance company that he says that he might as well have thrown his wallet into the harbor and promptly does so, catching his mistake only after the wallet leaves his hand -
The attractive black woman working for PECO smiles indulgently while on the phone helping the dumb white guy on the other end of the line try to find his water heater, which he finally locates in the cellar of his home after checking everywhere else -
The attractive black girl corrects the dumb white Verizon guy, telling him that the figure of speech he just used was a metaphor, not a simile as he had described it -
The dumb white guy buys a new car, which puts a dent in his wallet; the dumb white woman buys a used car in poor condition, which has a number of dents in it; the attractive black woman buys her used car from CarSense - it's like new, has a great warranty, and "makes those other two look pretty dense" (dents - get it? at least they come right out and effectively call the whites dumb) -
I tell myself when I'm watching such fare that it's just advertisers trying to swing the purchases and preferences of blacks, many of whom are just now starting to enjoy the financial rewards of the Trump economy for the first time - it helps me ignore somewhat the feeling of irritation I get at thinking I'm being lied to, preached to, and belittled.....

[Tax-chick]

My skin rushed with heat as I looked to my mom. Her eyes welling with hateful tears, ...

What?

[Tax-chick]

I became a partisan of Ms. Markle, about whom I was indifferent, when I read the racist posts about her on FR. FR made me a feminist, too. If I don’t decide to go Internet-free, I may end up a full-fledged Social Justice Warrior, as long as that doesn’t involve voting for Hillary Clinton.

Just as corporate programming against white men generates “racism” where there previously was indifference, racial invective and misogyny generates a pushback among those who wanted to be neutral. “Aren’t we all earthlings?” What a naif I was in those days.

[b4me]

“Her eyes welling with hateful tears”

so her mom was full of hate it came out in tears?

[T-Bone Texan]

"...I am now afraid to talk to black people and avoid them. They seem like a bomb that will go off at the slightest thing..."

Agreed. It's just not worth it. I have a family to protect.

Unless it is a black lady wearing a big church hat, coming directly out of a church, with a Bible in her hand, and calling me "Honey Chile'", then it does not pass the cost-benefit asnalysis.