Markle’s experience resonates with most black women

Just like the rest of the world of colour, with bated breath I watched the interview of a man who elected to step away from being a royal, deciding the life of a commoner was far better than imprisonment in an ivory tower, with all its decorum which in its own way calls into question the dignity and significance of others.

But it was the stories of the woman beside him that were harrowing for me.

Because Meghan Markle has survived the everyday life of a black woman magnified.

She has survived the abuses of a family’s refusal to accept her identity and it is trickling down to a child that she birthed within the “protection of her marriage, a legitimate child”.

A woman whose very core was subtly called into question and ill-treated simply because she did not come from the right side of the tracks.

This is the tale of the African woman: not good enough because “we do not know her people” or she is not cut from the right cloth.

And when she was suffocating from having to survive the torture of trying to, but not making the cut, when she pleaded for an opportunity to step outside of the family reach and ask for help, it was considered unbecoming and she was refused.

Her mental peace was sacrificed so the image of a picture-perfect family would remain intact. This is the life of a married black woman; this is the suffering we have seen in our mothers, grandmothers and aunts.

This is the life we have pleaded with the ones who have come before us to walk away from – for their sanity. But for me, it was the sentiments of those that watched and commented – the ones who had made up their minds that the allegations were all a farce.

For me, this was what hit home. This is the struggle of the black woman who wants to rise up the ranks – not as a pawn in the greater scheme of things, but as a capable force.

I am inclined to believe the Markle version of events because this is my everyday and very few people do stand in unison with black women who want to be seen as we are!

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