Dear Editor,
Someone sent me an article in the (British) Mirror titled `Here are my 15 examples of where the Royal Family was racist as hell’. I had been bypassing all this attention on Meghan Markle with a yawn until this Oprah interview which seems to have created quite a storm.
I must confess that I am rather bemused by charges of racism in general including in Guyana. I think there is often a lot of hypocrisy. For example the remarks about the baby’s skin colour. There is no shortage of black women, sadly, who are concerned about their own skin colour and are risking damage to their skin to make it lighter.
What is the royal family? A large extended family. Can we vouch for the racial tolerance of our own families let alone our extended families?! I have been told of stories of people in the same immediate family making remarks about skin colour of sisters and brothers. I believe the media has managed to magnify whatever glare of racism was certainly administered to Meghan Markle under cover of a smile if anyone knows the British.
While the Mirror article mentions Abdul who Queen Victoria kept very close to her (there is a Netflix film on this) it mentions only the racism of her son in getting rid of him as soon as she died. Queen Victoria’s treatment of Abdul as a beloved teacher does not count.
Queen Victoria’s adoption of the very black Nigerian baby, Sarah Bonetta, as her goddaughter in the 1840’s does not count. That young baby grew up under the queen’s supervision. She could come and go as she liked. When it was time for her to get married the queen took the trouble to find a very black Nigerian businessman for her husband as Sarah was uninterested in any other life. Then proceeded to hold a marriage ceremony befitting a goddaughter of the queen for the pair – in those days when she had nothing to prove to anyone. Their descendants live in Nigeria to this day.
Also, in my lifetime I recall the British royal family flying the Ethiopian royal family out of Ethiopia to protect them from the Derg. I seem to be unable to find any reference to it on the net today. It just goes to show.
The British royal family may be “racist as hell,” but so would many of our families be if we could include all our cousins, nieces, aunts, and uncles – not to mention ourselves.
Just sharing this for what it is worth in the balance of the verdict.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Collins
