I’m so over Meghan and Harry that they’re all I think about

I’m no royalist, so obviously I have not watched Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s interview with Oprah about the difficulties of being royalty.

Nor do I follow the news of their exploits or their Instagram accounts. However, much like the weather, the economy and the surprise release of new albums by Beyoncé, some news is simply impossible to avoid.

The upshot is that anti-royal as I might be, I am now as well informed about the Harry, Meghan and Oprah show as most royal watchers on the planet.

To recap: Harry is an English prince. He married Meghan Markle, a black American actress. Harry’s mother, Diana, was hounded to her death by media scrutiny. Harry therefore withdrew to the seclusion of North America to escape the media spotlight, especially now he has started a family.

Back story: The English royal family are former rulers of England, Britain, the United Kingdom and the various permutations thereof. They oversaw the colonisation of more than half the planet and the exploitation of its people and resources to enrich themselves and their nation. That done, they have retreated to various castles and palaces on their damp island to be celebrities.

This celebrity role is still quite unforgiving and can have a serious impact on one’s life, as Princess Diana might attest.

Oh, and don’t forget, the colonialism overseen by the royals was rooted in racism and murderous violence.
So we might have been able to see the beginnings of a problem when a black woman married into this family.

Me, personally, I would have been able to tell you things were going to go pear-shaped. Except I’m not interested in the royals, so I’ve not been bothered.

I’m not sixth in line to the English throne, but I have lived an aspect of this in getting married to a black person and ushering her into the bosom of my lily-white family. In short, it was a bit of a cock-up and I am now single again.

We are white, racism is in our bones and any black person entering such a space will do so with a large amount of generational pain. It’s a recipe for, if not disaster, then high drama. And my family are not even former rulers of the planet!

The racism of white people is sometimes like the water that fish live in. The privilege, entitlement and racist attitudes that enable our lifestyles so envelop us we are barely aware of them.

You could say the same for the British royal family, except they must have been aware of their privilege because they sent armies, explorers and businessmen out into the world to conquer and enslave native populations from Hong Kong to Kampala.

A difficult family to marry into, I’m sure.

The main issue at stake here seems to be who is awful: The royal family, or Harry and Meghan.

On balance, from my superficial perspective on the periphery of the internet, I am inclined to favour the black woman, if only because she is not descended from colonialists, conquerors and conquistadors.

Race is complicated, of course, and Princess Meghan – if that is her title – may well have colonial blood in her veins and she has indeed chosen to marry into this family.

But still.

She has not chosen to build a business upon reactionary elitist, feudalist and imperialist nostalgia. Indeed she seems to have tried to escape it.

I wish her the very best in continuing to do so.

I also wish that at some point, the media machine – of which I am a willing part – might gradually begin to escape our fascination with the royals, for that is ultimately what supports this entire ecosystem.

Elevation and celebration of an elite justifies elitism in all its forms, whether in business, government, subcultures and the economy. Elitism holds that some are simply better – or more important – than others because of who they are.

I believe this elitism is what we need to move away from as a society, whether the elites are white people, men, older people, city dwellers, the able-bodied, or people descended from kings and queens.

Perhaps once elitism is cast into the dustbin of history, the media-attention economy might start to align with the financial economy. Maybe then we might all start to gain equal opportunities – as well as equal coverage of our messed-up family dynamics!

Hagen Engler.

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