Oprah, Meghan, and Harry: A Royal Mess
I have never written a word in my 25+ years as a journalist about the British royal family. To be candid, I usually roll my eyes in disbelief as I see Americans go all googly-eyed over royal weddings and ceremonies.
Didn’t we win independence from those guys?
Yet when Meghan Markle became a member of that family by marrying Prince Harry I watched the wedding ceremony. The novelty intrigued me. I was familiar with her because she was featured in a favorite legal drama I used to watch, Suits.
But last night’s special on CBS, with Oprah interviewing Meghan and Harry, was more than intriguing—it was shocking and revelatory.
The Racial Dimensions of the Story
Much will be made of the racial components of the story: scandalous British tabloids with explicitly racist headlines about Meghan, but no pushback from “The Firm”—the organizational, operational and business arm of the institution that is the British Royal family—so it became open-season on the racially-mixed American actress. Further, an unnamed person in the family asked Harry, early in Meghan’s first pregnancy, about the skin color of the baby.
Oprah was shocked, aghast, gobsmacked. So were millions of others at that moment. Jewel and I certainly were.
As much as I prefer to focus on culture over race, I cannot make light of the nasty race-related parts of this story. In the United States, over the past twelve years, since Barack Obama ascended to the highest office in the land, the puss-infected underbelly of race, racialization, and racism has been revealed to be all-too-real in the thought and behavior of individuals to groups to institutions in the United States. (Of course, most Black folks could have told you that.) If there was any doubt that Barack Obama’s election as the first Black American President of the United States did not magically signal that the nation had achieved a post-racial state of being, the rise of white nationalist and explicitly white supremacist groups in the wake of the election of President Biden’s predecessor should have put that notion to rest.
Add the rise of anti-Asian attacks and violence in the wake of Covid, plus a rise in incidents of anti-Semitism in the last few years, and we have a picture of tribalsm that masks personal trauma and economic pain in favor of scapegoating “the other.” In the two-part series featuring my conversation with Wynton Marsalis last week, he and I discussed varieties of racism as manifested in the North and South of the United States.
But the racial dimensions of the Meghan-Harry story is of another order.
The House of Windsor and Royal Symbolism
Although a monarchy is the oldest form of government in the United Kingdom—over a thousand years old, in fact—the current House of Windsor officially began in 1917. Britain is a constitutional monarchy, which means that though the Queen and King of England is Head of State, the elected Parliament makes and passes legislation.
From the official website of the royal family, the more symbolic functions of The Monarch as “Head of Nation” are described: The Sovereign acts as a focus for national identity, unity and pride; gives a sense of stability and continuity; officially recognizes success and excellence; and supports the ideal of voluntary service. In all these roles The Sovereign is supported by members of their immediate family.
The symbolic role of the monarchy plays the role outlined above in the national context of the United Kingdom, but kings, queens, princes and princesses play a far larger role in the imaginal dimension of Western Culture. There’s, of course, the fairy tale tradition of the noble prince falling in love with a commoner, who becomes a princess. Children around the world learn this narrative, which influences their conception of gender roles. But this goes beyond so-called child’s play into how adults role-play.
If this wasn’t true why would have, in jazz, the two greatest big band leaders in history, Edward Kennedy Ellington and William James Basie, have stage names that respectively begin with “Duke” and “Count”?
The Imaginary and the Imaginal Dimensions of Royalty
So far, our account riffs on the racial and symbolic dimension of the sorry tale of Meghan and Harry and the institution dedicated to the perpetuation of the image and traditions of the House of Windsor called “The Firm.” There’s a dimension of nationality too; it’s not just that Meghan is part-Black, it’s that’s she’s also American. I suspect that those within “The Firm” who unceremoniously snatched away their son Archie’s royal status—and the security detail that comes with it—did so not only because the “royal bloodline” needed to maintain the tradition of whiteness but also because the very idea of the throne one day being passed off to an American heir is anathema.
For those attracted to the positive associations of royalty, the notion of expanding the possibility of achieving royal status to include them is powerful symbolic magnet. For those whose job it is to maintain the very institutional practice of the actual royal family, to maintain the traditions and customs and norms and behaviors of that cultural code, it’s not about democratic expansion and inclusion: it’s about preservation and conservation of power, wealth, and the symbolism that derives from the realm of the imaginary and imaginal. So it doesn’t matter that Meghan was suicidal—the image of the royal family and its relationship with the damn British tabloids takes precedence.
Didn’t they learn anything from the lessons of the tragedy of Princess Di? To refuse Meghan mental health help, when she was a member of the family, is, frankly, unforgivable.
In 1964, the French philosopher Henry Corbin delivered a paper in Paris at a colloquium on symbolism. It was titled “Mundus Imaginalis or The Imaginary and the Imaginal.” The distinction is important.
The imaginary, for Corbin, is too often considered to be “unreal” and about “fantasy.” He wanted a term to embody the actual power of symbols in the human psyche. He coined the term “imaginal” to encompass the way images, metaphors, and symbols are the intermediary realm between the physical and the spiritual, the tangible and the intangible, the visible and the invisible, the interior and exterior, self and other.
So to bring this all together: the imaginal symbolism of the royalty and its associated meanings is essential to the national identity of the United Kingdom, which is central to the identity of Western culture. For those who believe in what Stanley Crouch called the decoy of race, there’s an association of whiteness with British and Western identity. But since the cultural reality and actuality of both the United Kingdom and the United States of America is a pluralistic mixture of various cultures, ethnicities, religions, and the like, the social and political leadership of those lands should reflect that reality.
A noxious mixture of race, class, gender, nationality, the tabloid press, and institutional bias over human empathy and compassion are the takeaways of the sad tale that Meghan and Harry shared with Oprah last night. Thank goodness Harry and Meghan could come to the United States of America and be in the midst of more democratic freedom than they experienced when trapped in the vice of the moribund tradition of the monarchy.
Long live democracy. To hell with monarchy.