What ‘Harry & Meghan’ Still Doesn’t Say About Race

“Anyone inside that system, whether it’s my family, whether it’s staff, whether it’s P.R., whatever it is, have already missed an enormous opportunity with my wife,” Harry says. “And how far that would go globally.”

Of course, he is right. Referencing her popularity during their tours to Australia, South Africa, Malawi, Angola and Botswana, Harry highlighted Meghan’s rare ability, as a biracial woman, to both represent a truly modern monarchy and connect to the people — especially those in the Caribbean and Africa, which together contain more than half of the independent countries that make up the British Commonwealth.

And while such optimism is needed by many of us Black people to sustain our aspirations and ambitions as we navigate the predominantly white institutions in which we often live, learn or work, it is also somewhat naïve. It risks prioritizing individuality over collectivity and symbolism over structural change. While one person might move up the ladder and serve as an inspirational example, the infrastructure of discrimination often remains the same — unbending, unmoving and ultimately unwelcoming.

The British Empire is still with us, in a way, in the form of the Commonwealth realms. A group of nations that still count the British monarch as their head of state, ‌the realms are mostly former colonies, and some have grown increasingly incensed at Britain’s reluctance to atone for various horrors it perpetrated during the colonial era and, in some cases, beyond.

So, at the end of my six hours of watching “Harry & Meghan,” I found myself caring far less about their family scandals or even their enviable fairy-tale romance. It was the parallel narrative of the documentary that lingered: If Meghan had been allowed to fulfill her role as what the Australian scholar Jess Carniel calls “The Commonwealth Princess,” what would that have actually achieved for those millions of people who saw themselves in her?

We will never know. Instead, progress has been made in other ways. Six commonwealth countries in the Caribbean formally expressed a desire earlier this year to move out from under the Crown. In 2021, Barbados cut its ties. Protesters in Jamaica and Belize demanded an apology and reparations for slavery from the British crown during William and Kate’s tour there in March.