The U.S. Media and the Biracial Royal Baby
These are a few of the headlines to hit the public in the last few days since the birth of Baby Sussex:
- Don’t use the royal birth to trot out a dangerous myth – CNN
- The Royal Baby and Blackness as a Badge of Honor – The New York Times
- Will Meghan Markle and Prince Harry raise their baby to be black? The LA Times
I won’t go into the specifics of each article because they are all flawed and unworthy of individual mention, but suffice it to say that they all want the royal baby to racially identify as black. They talk all about kinky hair and skin tone. They claim that black pride is the only kind of pride.
I hold the media responsible for publishing this drivel. They give up their principals for shock value and kowtowing to the black population. I hate to break it to them, but their readership is also the multiracial population—or was until they began slanting their stories away from us.
What they don’t get is that the multiracial community is not taking away any blackness from the royal family. Being biracial or multiracial means embracing your entire racial heritage—black and white. Period.
Susan Graham is the president of Project RACE and author of Born Biracial: How One Mother Took on Race in America.