Meghan Markle praised the Black Lives Matter movement, while she and her husband, Prince Harry, demanded an end to “structural racism” in the U.K., in an interview with The Evening Standard .
October is Black History Month (BHM) in the United Kingdom. For the occasion, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke about the issue of racism, both in their former home country and in the U.S., their new home.
Specifically, Meghan mentioned the controversy the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has created in the U.S. The cause became prominent in the wake of George Floyd’s death, which sparked protests across the country. Some of those demonstrations became violent, casting the movement in a negative light to some observers and making it, as Meghan described it, “inflammatory for a lot of people.”
She went on to contrast the image of violence associated with the cause to the goals that can be achieved through peaceful protest.
“When there is just peaceful protest and when there is the intention of just wanting community and just wanting the recognition of equality, then that is a beautiful thing,” she said.
The matter of racism is not limited to the United States, of course. It’s purportedly such a problem in the United Kingdom that Harry and Meghan described it as “structural” and called for its end.
“For as long as structural racism exists, there will be generations of young people of color who do not start their lives with the same equality of opportunity as their white peers,” they wrote for a companion Evening Standard piece.
To address the problem, Harry called for fellow Britons to educate themselves, a process he says that he himself is going through. Specifically, he noted that he’s come to understand at least some of the frustrations faced by people of color since marrying his bi-racial wife.
“I wasn’t aware of so many of the issues and so many of the problems within the UK and also globally as well. I thought I did but I didn’t,” he said.
For Black History Month in the U.K., the duke and duchess have produced a list — BHM NextGen Trailblazers — of people of color in the country who have created a positive impact. Individuals on the list include rugby star Maro Itoje, Vogue editor Edward Enninful, Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams, and Booker prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo. All of them “inspired” the couple through their actions.
