Thomas Markle, the father of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, yesterday said that he did not think the British royal family was racist, and hoped that an alleged remark from a family member about the darkness of the skin of Meghan’s son was just a “dumb question.”
Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that aired on Sunday that her son Archie, now aged one, had been denied the title of prince and that there were concerns within the royal family “about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
“I have great respect for the royals, and I don’t think the British royal family are racist at all. I don’t think the British are racist, I think Los Angeles is racist, California is a racist, but I don’t think the Brits are,” Markle told ITV.
“The thing about what color will the baby be or how dark will the baby be; I’m guessing and hoping it’s just a dumb question from somebody... It could be somebody asked a stupid question. Rather than being a total racist,” he said.
“This whole thing about color and how dark the baby is is bullshit,” Markle said, adding that he thought the comment should be investigated.
Markle and his daughter have been estranged since her marriage to Prince Harry in 2018. Markle, a former lighting director for US TV soaps and sitcoms, pulled out of the wedding days beforehand after undergoing heart surgery.
He said his daughter had let him down while he was ill.
“I also feel that she let me down,” he said. “I was in a hospital bed the last time we talked and we I never heard from them again — they didn’t care if I died.”
In related news, Winfrey said on Monday that Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were not behind comments about Harry and Meghan’s child.
Winfrey said that Harry would not share the identity of the person, but had stressed “it was not his grandmother or grandfather who were part of those conversations.”
“I tried to get that answer, on camera and off,” she added.
Additional reporting by The Guardian
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