An interview by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan featuring accusations of racism against the Royal Family may have shocked some who watched it, but for Risée Chaderton-Charles in Barbados, it only sparked a sense of familiarity.
“The monarchy is actually built on a system of class that has been designed to exclude people of colour, so (Meghan’s claims) were completely unsurprising to me,” equality advocate Chaderton-Charles said in a Zoom interview from Christ Church, about 16 kilometres southeast of the capital Bridgetown.
Meghan’s claim that a member of the Royal Family questioned the colour of her then-unborn baby’s skin, and other slights resonated with Chaderton-Charles, a mother of three. She said in both her personal life and during her time working in the hospitality industry with tourists from the United Kingdom, she’s been in situations where “people have expressed surprise that I was articulate and surprised that I did not live in a hut on the beach.”
Harry’s brother, Prince William, has since insisted that the family is not racist. But Chaderton-Charles said the conversation shouldn’t be about allegations against one individual but a reckoning of the historical legacy of the entire British monarchy.
Cutting ties with the monarchy
The couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired on March 7: “is just the icing on the very distasteful cake that has long been colonialism,” she said.
“We are long past the time that we should have cut ties…
