While they gave an unusually raw glimpse at the toll that life under the microscope can take on one’s psyche, even a royal psyche, it’s the general consensus that Meghan and Harry simply wouldn’t be as free to truly speak their minds as they have in recent months if they had remained full-time employees of “the Firm.”
“I wasn’t sure what I could say to you,” Meghan said in a video message addressing the May 25 death of George Floyd after a Minneapolis cop, since charged with second-degree murder, held his knee to Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. “I wanted to say the right thing…I realized, the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.”
Which is basically the exact opposite approach that the royal family has historically taken with so many things, matters big and small.
On July 1, sitting down virtually with young leaders from The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, both Meghan and Harry spoke frankly about racism and inequality. Calling the ongoing protests and seemingly increased awareness all over the world “a moment of reckoning,” Meghan said, “In that self-reflection, it’s acknowledging what mistakes we’ve all made,. Each of us, individually, what have we done in our past? … So many people go, ‘I need to own that.'”
Then again, so many people also do not take any responsibility whatsoever for what plagues society.
“When it comes to institutional, systemic racism, it’s there and it stays there because someone, somewhere is benefiting from it,” Harry said. “We can’t deny or ignore the fact that all of us have been brought up and educated to see the world differently, however, once you start to realize that there is that bias there, then you need to acknowledge it.”
Meghan added, “It’s not just in the big moments, it’s in the quiet moments where racism and unconscious bias lies and thrives. It makes it confusing for a lot of people to understand the role that they play in that, both passively and actively.”