Bryndis Roberts tearfully watched the Harry & Meghan documentary series.
She has been an avid fan of the royals since the days of Princess Diana and said she cried as she watched the family being hounded by the tabloids and Prince Harry described how he and his brother Prince William grew apart.
But as a 65-year-old black woman growing up in the segregated American South, Roberts said it was the open discussions about race and racism that resonated with her the most.
She said she recognizes some of her own experiences in Meghan’s admission that she felt she had to constantly prove herself and would never be good enough.
“I’ve been called an angry black woman and all the tropes that are used to demean and dehumanize black women and so I certainly felt for them and sympathized with them [the duchess],” She said.
Racing was a central theme in the six-part series, but not in the way many expected.
There were no new revelations about Meghan’s explosive allegation in her interview with Oprah Winfrey that an unnamed member of the royal family had commented on how “dark” her baby’s skin would be.
Instead, the couple used the Netflix show to argue that Meghan’s biracial heritage was often an underlying factor in what they described as a relentless tabloid campaign against her – and more obviously the racial abuse she suffered online.
It’s a narrative that Roberts recognizes. In 2018, she helped popularize the hashtag #SussexSquad when her timeline was flooded with racist comments about Meghan after the royal wedding. The trend quickly attracted a following of men and women around the world – mostly people of color – who wanted to use social media to support the Duchess and her family rather than tear them down.
“One of the things about dog whistles is that if you haven’t experienced the racism or if you haven’t been a victim of it, you don’t realize it,” Roberts said. “You can see what may seem innocent to another, no, that shouldn’t be innocent at all.”
The story goes on
When trolling crosses the line
On the series, Prince Harry revealed that one of the first reactions he saw to the announcement of his son Archie’s birth was a tweet from Danny Baker, a former BBC presenter, who posted a picture of a couple kissing a Chimpanzee holding hands.
“It said ‘Royal Baby Leaving Hospital’ at the top. That was one of the first things I saw,” said Prince Harry. Mr Baker apologized and was later fired.
American tech entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy told the BBC the couple’s children are regularly compared to monkeys in online attacks, with the N-word often used against Meghan.
Bouzy appeared on the series after his company, Bot Sentinel, discovered that a small but powerful number of anti-Meghan accounts were responsible for much of the hateful content on Twitter.
“It mimics something from a Russian troll farm,” Bouzy said. “I’m not saying there aren’t people out there who just don’t like them for some reason, but when I look at the bigger picture of these hate accounts, I don’t think you can look at that and come to the conclusion that this isn’t about race.”
RS Locke, an American royal observer and commentator, claimed the venom against Meghan was rooted in misogynoir, a hatred of a person simply because she is black and a woman. The documentary series, she said, captured the dramatic shift in the tone of media coverage that she witnessed in the years following the royal wedding.
“Britain, like the rest of the world, wants to accept and embrace this very diverse, modern couple,” she said. But the backlash and the racial abuse Meghan says she has endured since then showed how far there was still to go.
“It’s a tug of war between how we see ourselves and who we are.”
Not all black and white
While many black Americans welcomed Harry and Meghan and spoke out about racism — as well as difficult issues like the legacy of slavery and colonialism — the Duchess has also been criticized for feeling overwhelmed by the reality of life as a black woman.
In the second episode of the series, Meghan explores what it was like growing up as a mixed race woman in America. The Duchess implies she was never discriminated against or “treated like a black woman” until she moved to the UK.
Growing up, she explained, her mother never “did the conversation” with her, referring to the open discussion many families need to have about the realities of racism, discrimination, and the challenges of being a person of color in America.
For some who watched the series, that admission felt like a slap in the face.
“I don’t get it, how was she raised by an all black woman in America and then she says her parents never spoke to her about being black.” A user posted on Twitter. “We were supposed to see her as this black woman, but she never had a relationship with us.”
Others wanted the Duchess to clarify whether she even identified as a black woman before marrying Prince Harry.
Roberts said she felt this statement showed that colorism was still an issue in the United States and that she did not want to perpetuate that prejudice by blaming the Duchess for having different life experiences than hers, when she grew up with a darker complexion.
The couple have started a new life in California
Many online agreed with her.
“It’s Meghan who realizes that being approved doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance. Diversity is not necessarily inclusion.” a user tweeted. “It’s a moment most black people have, and it’s time to decide if my seat at the table is worth the pain and humiliation.”
Roberts said watching Harry and Meghan present their version of what happened – and what went wrong – was particularly emotional because it felt like a missed opportunity for the royal family.
“It’s just tragic that the institution failed to recognize the jewels they had in Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan and they didn’t say, ‘These two people can reach members of the British public and Commonwealth that the rest of us can’t can reach. ‘” She said.