Why Harry and Meghan’s ‘Megxit’ is a crossroads for the UK on race


By Courtney Vinopal

January 20, 2020

PBS NewsHour

When Meghan married Harry in a much-watched ceremony in 2018, dozens of articles were published about what her biracial identity meant to black women in Britain and the U.S. alike.

British writer Afua Hirsch called the nuptials, which featured a gospel choir and a sermon by the African-American Episcopal Reverend Michael Curry, a “celebration of blackness.” University of Pennsylvania professor Salishmisha Tilley praised the “bicultural blackness” of the wedding in a column for The New York Times.

“It had a very feel-good factor,” Abbey said of the event. “That a descendent of American slavery, someone who could trace her lineage back to that, could find herself in the royal marriage by virtue of love…it was a fairy tale come true.”

“Her wedding — with its explicit connections to the black and African American communities — is something the world will never forget, since those examples of black culture are rarely highlighted within positions of power,” Sarah Gaither, a Duke University psychologist, wrote in an email to the PBS NewsHour. Gaither, who specializes in biracial and social identities, added that Meghan “is living proof that a real princess doesn’t have to be white.”

Read the full article here.