THANKS TO WIKIPEDIA FOR THE IMAGES, AND AMAL FROM THE INDIAN EXPRESS FOR THE CAPTION
With the Meghan and Harry fiasco splashed all over the media, it’s fair game for a comment on a blog that asks, “Are People Stupid?” I see two elements at play, here.
Game of Thrones
Our first job is to put the contest in the proper frame. We are talking about the royal family of one of the longest-running empires the world has seen. Surely no one thinks that the top of the heap of the British caste system is anything but a cesspool of power politics. No matter what their nicey-nicey image is, every member of that family, and especially the ones that married into it, are experts at the vicious clamber to the top. The kicker is that most of the royals are male, so most of the married-ins are female, adding all sorts of gender issues. Diana was the most noted casualty.
So when Harry brought an outsider into the mêlée that destroyed his mother, there is little doubt that he had an idea of what he was doing, and perhaps a suspicion that he was making a point. He found someone who had her own fame, her own social following. The mistake they both made was assuming she could compete. Utter idiocy.
Image, Image, Image
This whole thing is about publicity. The British royal family is an outmoded political anomaly held together by a rigid corporate and social structure based solely on their popularity. They have the reputation of being a class act. Ha, ha. Meghan comes from the top of American royalty: movie stars, who have far more clout, but not such an upstanding reputation.
So when Meghan, spurred on by her competitive husband, fought the good fight and lost the first battle, she ran home to her own little castle and rallied her troops.
Reality Shows its Ugly Face
And she used the clout of the royal family of England to get to the royalty of American TV, the Oprah Show. It was an amazing display of power. But then she had to come through with an act worthy of its hype.
And she failed miserably. Instead of the kind of thoughtful, meaningful interviews we have come to expect from Oprah, we got the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel of the American Coliseum: reality television. Her act was worthy of icons like Ricci Lake, Geraldo, or The Apprentice. I mean, this was a low point in the Oprah show. She sat there through the whole thing with a stunned look on her face, probably wondering if there was any way she could rig a power failure in the studio.
Grade Three on the Playground
When Meghan got to the part about “She says I made her cry, but that’s a lie. She made me cry!” I turned the TV off. Children of around 9 years old are just learning about social maneuvering, and while the boys tend to pummel each other and forget about it, a certain type of little girl starts practicing what she has learned from her mother. The result is broomsticks flying around the classroom, and I’m not talking Quidditch. Grade 3 is not my favourite age to teach.
Most of them either grow out of it or take it underground, but it’s still there, just waiting for a social media outlet. And we saw it all last week.
Racism
Put in that kind of context, the charge of racism against the royal family is problematic. Let’s be clear. If we’re playing by the rules of the Game of Thrones, taking the power struggle to her base and playing the black ace is completely fair, and it gave Meghan a great advantage in the battle, and solidified Oprah’s viewing public behind her. Win-win. I’m not so sure it helped the fight against racism in general, but I doubt Meghan had that in mind.
Three Kinds of Racism
Is “The Firm” of the royal family racist? In terms of the overt, bullying kind of racism, they probably aren’t. In fact, the official policies of the British Government are definitely against bias of that sort, and the royals are the leaders in that area.
However, there are more subtle forms of racism, and here the British royals don’t come off so clean.
“What Colour Will Your Child Be?”
Put in the context of my family, where ancestry includes Persian, Syrian, Baluchi, Punjabi, Filipino, and Canadian Indigenous (with a few Caucasians scattered through) it would probably be considered an honest query, might be a subject for lively conversation, and no one would feel hurt.
Put in the context of an outsider trying to muscle into an existing power bloc, it could well be considered an attack.
The Golden Rule is Not Enough
And then we come to unconscious racism. We have all been taught to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. I’m a self-confident member of the dominant race in Canada, so for me, that’s not good enough. You can make jokes about the Irish and the Scottish all you like, and I’ll judge the gag on its merit as humour. For me to expect someone of a visible minority to accept the same type of joke on the same terms would be the height of insensitivity.
“I Didn’t Mean to…”
Not intending to hurt someone does not excuse you from hurting someone. Just like with drinking and driving, the morality of the action must be judged by the effect on the recipient. And, in the case of racist speech and behaviour, there is a certain standard of expected sensitivity. You’re supposed to know better than to injure the feelings of someone who has a different life experience from yourself. The convenient thing with skin colour is that it gives us an obvious clue.
The Bottom Line
The lesson we all must learn from this display of vindictiveness and bad taste is that it’s not good enough to pretend that you’re unbiased. You have to be sensitive to the needs of others. Which I would guess the royals, the apex of the privileged, are not.
Meghan thought she was going to play Connecticut Yankee and overwhelm King Arthur’s Court. When she discovered she was out of her league, she dragged the whole lot of them down to a level below her own standards. Definitely a lose-lose situation. Another lesson.
Her only moral high ground in this whole situation is that she earned her fame through talent and hard work. The sooner she gets out of this mud-slinging fest and goes back to acting, the better off she will be.
As far as Harry is concerned, he made his try to do better than his father did, and now he’s learning what his mother felt like. Now he’s the one out of his métier. Heaven knows what he’s going to do for the rest of his life.