Al Sharpton rallied behind Meghan Markle on Tuesday, saying she was “like someone Black who worked in the C-suites,” a company’s executive level. As a result of media criticism about Markle’s alleged behavior, Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, stepped down from the British senior royal family in January 2020. When they left, Markle and her husband complained about Buckingham Palace’s lack of support and racist treatment by the press. In a few explosive interviews in a Netflix docuseries called Harry & Meghan, the couple made several accusations against the Royal family, including that their son’s skin tone was discussed within the family. Even though the wedding of the couple was widely celebrated, Sharpton suggested that Markle had soon after been victimized by racism. “I think when they were married it was a beautiful day,” Sharpton said on Good Morning Britain. “And people were celebrating how you saw this woman of color now in the Royal family, gospel songs there, sung at the ceremony, the Queen sitting there. “And then the reaction was so, so much acrimony,” he added.
“And just looking to treat her differently. And people, who whether you were in the UK or around the world, they were always treated differently, understood what Meghan was going through. It was somebody Black working in the C-suites for the first time. And they treat you differently. “I think she became a symbol not of her own making,” he concluded. Sharpton also commented on Jeremy Clarkson’s controversial December piece in The Sun, in which he wrote “on a cellular level” that he hated the Duchess of Sussex and dreamed of having her paraded naked through British towns “while the crowds chant ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” A later apology by Clarkson explained that he was “mortified” by the article. “I’m just not sexist and I abhor violence against women,” he wrote. “And yet I seem to be advocating just that. “I, therefore, wrote to everyone who works with me saying how sorry I was, and then on Christmas morning, I e-mailed Harry and Meghan in California to apologise to them too,” he continued.
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“I said I was baffled by what they had been saying on TV but that the language I’d used in my column was disgraceful and that I was profoundly sorry.” Sharpton rejected Clarkson’s apology and described the article as “mean-spirited. “But what makes you feel that you can say that in the first place?” Sharpton asked. “And I think that in many ways they exposed what was already there. And then people try to blame Meghan for they are being exposed.” As King Charles III‘s coronation approaches, there has been more discussion about whether his son, Prince Harry and daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle, will attend. According to PEOPLE, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have yet to be invited to the coronation, which will take place on May 6.
