As the novelist Zadie Smith once observed, “race in America is what class is in Britain”, says Douglas Murray in The Daily Telegraph: “the discussion beneath every discussion”. Barely hours after Queen Elizabeth II died, The New York Times began pushing the story into the same “remorseless groove of identity politics” in which it covers everything. It’s the same with the Sussexes, now living in America, who are using race “as the main lens” through which they view the British public and its monarchy. “Racism” is Meghan’s “only explanation” for her failure to fit into the royal family.
The truth is “far less scandalous”, and not flattering to her or to Harry: the British public only turned against them because they turned against the British public “and one of our great institutions”. People were “thrilled” when the couple got married in 2018. Any comments about Meghan being mixed-race mainly took the line that “in a multi-ethnic society it seemed a positive boon to have a multi-ethnic royal family”. It should be no surprise that many black Britons “retain an utter devotion to the monarchy”. Yet the Sussexes seem to have been shocked that this ancient, “carefully stratified” organisation contained “hierarchy” – and that Meghan was lower down in it than she hoped. So they abandoned their royal duties, though still keeping their titles, and began “chasing celebrity in California”. They could have been “a jewel in the British crown”, but they “wrecked themselves”.