Over the weekend, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry welcomed their second child. Lilibet ‘Lili’ Diana Mountbatten-Windsor has joined the Gemini nation and is named after her great-grandmother and grandmother, much like Princess Charlotte, whose middle names are Elizabeth and Diana. This newborn child, who is only, at the time of writing, three days old, is apparently old enough to experience racism at the hands of British media, who insist that they are absolutely not at all racist.
Julie Burchill, an English writer, is best known to me for being sued for libel after calling fellow journalist Ash Sarkar “an Islamist, a hypocrite and worshipping a pedophile.”
Burchill tweeted out following the announcement: “What a missed opportunity. They could have called it Georgina Floydina!”
First of all, how fucking disgusting and vile to make that kind of “joke,” and secondly, their use of “it” was loaded and only added to the horrendous nature of the entire thing. Burchill tried to deflect, claiming they were using the word “it” to appeal to non-binary folks, but I can assure you that non-binary people do not like being called it in a dehumanizing way.
“I called the baby IT as a nod to non-binary bollocks – and if you think you can make me respect a violent criminal who once held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach, you’re in for a VERY long wait,” Burchill tweeted out. “Have a good time with your pearl-clutching life-wasting woo-woo, ya clowns!”
Yes, we are the pearl clutchers for calling out your blatant racism. Even after you literally were forced to apologize for racism this year when you lost your book deal, and then had to drop your other publisher because they ended up being a white supremacist.
In December Julie Burchill accused me of worshipping a paedophile and called me an Islamist.
After legal action, she has apologised in full for these falsehoods, for playing into “Islamophobic tropes” and making “racist and misogynist” comments about my appearance and sex life. https://t.co/7scZBelq5w
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) March 16, 2021
In addition to the racism, some are trying to be smug with the fact that Harry and Meghan named their daughter after the Queen and Diana, considering they have made great waves against the British Royal Family as an institution. This, of course, ignores that Harry and Meghan have (repeatedly) said in interviews that the Queen and the late Prince Phillip were not the ones being racist to them. Are they all part of the mess of the system itself? Yes, but that’s also not accounting for the personal fact that Elizabeth is still Harry’s grandmother and shared a close relationship.
Diana is Harry’s mother and is hardly a figure that, today, would resonate with keeping in line with the Royal family. As much as it would be fun to think that, neither Meghan nor her husband are anti-monarchy or want to tear down the Royal family as an institution. They are simply using their already overexposed platform by the nature of their titles to shine a light on how the outdated system has failed them—something Diana was already doing in the ’90s.
But you’ll see that in the next season of The Crown.
What always strikes me as jarring is that Meghan Markle was the best kind of marketable woman of color that the Royal family could have asked for: respectable, no scandals, beautiful, and a lighter-skinned biracial Black woman with the only problematic family members being other white people! Imagine if they had pushed back against the racism in the media and actually worked to fix that? Instead, the Firm stayed strong to tradition to their own detriment. And although Meghan Markle has been nothing but almost polite to a fault, it doesn’t matter. She is still too Black, too in control, and too loved by her husband.
That’s how deep this anti-Blackness goes. It doesn’t matter how light she is, how many titles she gets, or tiaras are put on her head, to the racists in British media, and she will always be an arrogant Negro with Negro children.
Congratulations to The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the birth of Lilibet Diana! The Queen, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall and The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are delighted with the news.
Lilibet is Her Majesty’s 11th great-grandchild. pic.twitter.com/dGVeRpd3pK
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 6, 2021
(Image: Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese via Getty)
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