The Racial Discrimination of the Royal Family of England

The recent interview of prince Harry and Meghan has captured the interest of people globally. Around 50 million people watched the interview and were appalled by Meghan’s claims about the racism she had to face by the royal family. She said that the racism gave her suicidal thoughts.
The tragic reality is that these social media discussions and headlines were nothing new for Black women. Currently, social media is questioning whether Meghan was mistreated by the royal family and the press just because of racism. However, I think that this is just another example of people denying or questioning the hardships faced by a Black woman due to racism.

Gaye Theresa Johnson, who is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA, stated that white supremacy makes a person feel isolated. This is due to the person feeling as if there is no one who is willing to listen or support them. Gaye Theresa Johnson emphasized strongly on how harmful it is to a person to feel as if their feelings are not validated.

I strongly believe that Harry’s marriage to Meghan could have been very beneficial for Britain, the crown, and for the Commonwealth. If you think about it, their story seems like a Black fairytale. A girl, descended from Africans who were kidnapped and brought to America, married to a prince of England. Britain blew it. They could have reaped the benefits of such an advantageous match but their racism ruined it.
The irony in Meghan and Harry escaping to the United States is just sad, given that the British frequently highlight that they are not as bad as the Americans. However, if we just look at the numbers, we can see that the British are much more awful. This is quite obvious by the difference in Covid-19 related deaths, criminal justice and employment opportunities.

If we just look at the difference between unemployment rate of Black Americans and Black Britons, we car easily see which country is more racist. Joblessness rates for white Americans and Black Americans remain at 5.6 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively. While, white Britons and Black Britons, unemployment rate remains at 4.5 percent and 13.8 percent. The 2008 Equality and Human Rights Commission report says that there is more noteworthy difference in the number of Black people and White people in detainment facilities in the UK than there is in the United States. These discoveries were supported by an investigation in 2017.

Let me share a sad reality with you. Even after all our progress, racism remains deep-rooted in us. There will never be a more crucial time for us to stop and start noticing the deep-rooted racism in the United States. The realities of people with color are very different compared to white people’s due to the constant racism they face. Discrimination is an unmistakable and fundamental matter present in any American’s life and I think that it has a significantly harmful effect on a person’s mental health and well-being. It astounds me that racism still exists in such advanced countries.

You’d think a Civil War might be enough to resolve this issue. The Southern states which believed in keeping slaves fought with the northern states in 1861. The reason for the battle was that the South wanted to introduce slavery in the West as America developed. The South lost and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation liberated the slaves.

Be that as it may, the South was never reproved for having slaves. History was changed to make the Civil War seem like a squabble between siblings. The North only cared about being back in the old Confederacy. They did not really care about racism and bigotry. They only cared about not upsetting the Union. There was no endeavor to change the hearts of Southern bigots.

As long as the Union stayed flawless, bigots could do whatever they wanted. They could lynch, and plunder and consume. They could commit murder and rape. They could undermine and scare. They could bully. Consequently, segregation rose and Black citizens were terrorized. The most stupid thing was that this mentality was left unquestioned – the idea that white might is correct, and individuals of color should be treated as peasants. This mentality remains deep rooted in America’s police. I think that the reason for that is that, in the past, the job of the police was to catch the Black slaves that would run away.

It is that backward mentality that drove President Woodrow Wilson, who was in office from 1913 to 1921, to administer the re-segregation of numerous government organizations. He, also, openly showed support for the Ku Klux Klan.

The mentality, at the turn of the twentieth Century, considered individuals of color as wide-eyed “happy negroes” satisfied with their part as helpless tenant farmers and shoe shiners.
This mentality also, led to the creation of many Confederate status of Southern civil war leaders, that are currently the subject of conflict today. The men that were revered as nationalists, when they battled to separate the Union, should have been treated as backstabbers, not saints.

AI and automation are consistently being utilized to spread hate and racism via social media.1 believe that it is the responsibility of the community to battle the Online propaganda and negate false information. What is considered as hate speech? The question, still, remains unresolved as there is no agreement between law and social media platforms as to what should be considered as hate speech. The appropriate response of automated systems to hate speech is still not agreed upon. It is too easy for a racist to make use of the internet to harass people for belonging to a particular race. I think this could lead to the victim not feeling safe enough to ever vote. It could, also, lead to a disintegration of civic duties. People might not be able to exercise their civil and political rights. Hate speech can be a successful instrument to control the votes of a particular race.

White Americans find it simple to put the past in the past. For them, it is easy to consider the cruelty and unfairness of the past, as having no implication in the present. African Americans’ reality differs. For them, the present and past remain intertwined. The racism in the past, still lives on and affects the lives of countless Black people.

I know this is the truth because by looking at the reports, I saw countless accounts of police being mercilessness, Black people facing discrimination in lodging and employment opportunities. There have been many dubious deaths of Black people while they were in police custody. They don’t ever properly investigate the deaths. The system usually just exonerates the police officers that are involved in the case. I find this cycle detestable. Rather than condoning such brutal acts, this cycle just encourages them.

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and many more this year shows how deep-rooted racism is in the system and how much it controls the justice system. Furthermore, if we notice the effect of Corona virus on the United States, we can clearly see that COVID-19 has affected Black Americans much more than White Americans. It sickens me to say that 76% of Black Americans faced racism in the last year. Sadly, the United States’ health care institutions and the police remain severely affected by racism.

Bigotry runs wild in medication—in 2016, the US National Academy of Sciences reported that 29% of white first-year American medical students felt that Black individuals’ blood coagulates more rapidly than white people’s, and 21 percent believed that Black people’s immune systems were stronger compared to white people. It is extremely alarming that racism has been embedded so deeply that even medical facts are based on it. This sort of false information can lead to insufficient preventive measures and sub-par treatment, resulting into awful consequences on the health of Black people. A study was done which showed how dangerous racism in medicine can be. It stated that racism has led to the probability of a Black woman dying of a heart disease is three times higher than a white woman dying of a heart disease.

Bigotry has controlled Black people’s financial advancement for quite a long time. The advantages of the post–World War II GI Bill, which helped in the development of the American working class, were generally denied to Black individuals. This was due to the demand of white individuals of Congress from the South frantic to authorize racial segregation. They did not even care if the black individual was a war hero. A Federal Housing Administration policy, known as “Redlining,” deemed Black neighborhood unworthy of having their mortgages insured. This led to Black Americans being shut out of the most common and well-known way of getting rich. These elements have all had a major part in the Black-white gap in wealth. It is honestly, so disappointing that the human race remains so shallow that they deny or grant opportunities based on the color of the person’s skin. A 2019 McKinsey report, median white families are about 10 times richer than median Black families.

Fundamental bigotry is a worldwide issue. Racism needs to be eradicated for multiple reasons, moral and otherwise. One factor that is frequently disregarded in the discussion regarding racism is the effect on economy due to racism. I will prove to you that racism has negatively affected the economies of many countries. Racism is expensive. The reason is that the country cannot realize its full economic potential if it cannot make use of all able individuals. A country that is less racist can be on economically strong country.

For example, the wealth gap between American whites and Blacks is amounted to the somewhere in between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion in lost consumption and investment from 2019 to 2028. This means a projected GDP penalty of four to six percent in the year 2028 (Noel and others 2019).

I can also give you the example of France. Or then again consider France, where GDP could hop 1.5 percent throughout the following 20 years—a financial reward of $3.6 billion—by lessening racial gaps in admittance to jobs, work hours, and education (Bon-Maury and others 2016). We can also talk about Brazil. Brazil could be doing so much better if it didn’t have marginalized communities. Racism is costing the country very much.
Obviously, these three nations are not by any means the only ones to encounter racism and its injurious social and financial impacts. All of us need to acknowledge its existence and help eradicate it.

In a survey of Australians taken in the wake of the protests following George Floyd’s death, seventy eight percent of the people said that US authorities have been reluctant to accept the racism embedded in them. Thirty percent accepted there was institutional racism in Australian police powers. This view clashes with the fact that due to racism, especially against native Australians, Australia has been at a loss of A$44.9 billion from 2001 to 2011.

Other than that, different racist episodes in China against African foreigners ruin the advantageous Sino-African relationship for trade and investment. Yaqiu Wang, an analyst at Human Rights Watch, believes that China is just lying when they say that Chinese authorities have no tolerance for discrimination of any kind. The racism faced by the Africans in Guangzhou proves that China is no better then the rest.

Economic benefits are not the only reason to fight racism. Obviously, the economy of any country would benefit a lot if racism was eradicated but I personally believe that it is the duty of the government to ensure equal treatment of all its citizens. It is high time that we all understood the gravity of the situation created by racism. We can no longer take racism lightly. Proper measures need to be taken to ensure equal treatment of all human beings. It is time that our policymakers defeat racism. If they are unable to do so, racism will keep costing us all.

Written By: Ekow Shalders