‘Is it time to stop being so obsessed with Harry & Meghan?’

Yes, probably, but watching the couple's Netflix documentary has stirred up some emotion for me relating to the monarchy

Despite all my attempts to avoid the news, H&M content has been unavoidable for the last week. As part of my excellent job heading up a women’s media brand, keeping up a steady stream of news-related opinion posts is what keeps my CEO happy. And so I watched the self-produced Netflix documentary by Harry & Meghan with a healthy dose of reluctance because, as with most things (British) Royal Family, I generally have no opinion – or interest.

This is in stark contrast to me circa 2012, the year of the London Olympics, when you couldn’t pay me not to have on my person anything bearing the Union Jack. I wore the print as proudly as if I had just landed in London’s suburbs and was claiming it as my own; presumably in the same style as colonisers “discovering” islands and worlds outside this tiny one. This was also the year I was pregnant with Annie, our “Olympic baby”, who I was hoping to give me the kind of simcha* we innocently assume will come with newborns.

My ex-husband is white and I am black so we knew our daughter would be brown but not how brown. At this point people will immediately cry out, ‘what does it matter?!’ Indeed. However, in the documentary, Meghan points out that it wasn’t well into her adulthood that people realised her skin tone was anything but what her ex agent refers to as “sun-kissed” and this affected not just how she was cast but also how she was treated. In her (media) world, it worked for her to be passable as white while, in contrast, my then husband specifically asked me to make sure I delivered a ‘proper mixed race baby’ because he was just delighted to be mixing up the gene pool. Interestingly, I noticed that while the photos of Meghan as a child featured her with natural curly hair, as an adult, she wears it completely straight which somehow makes her mixed race features even less visible.

Source: Grosby Group [Meghan with her mumma.]

Recently a (white) friend and I were wondering why the only things we took away from history lessons in school were the story of Henry VIII, 1066 and how bad Hitler was. Just us?? It is perhaps not unusual for the UK curriculum to black out its involvement with the slave trade, how slave trade owners were paid FOR YEARS for giving up their slaves and how QEII’s control over other countries has not helped them to rise up to the general level of (comparative) wealth in the UK. This documentary reminds and educates us on all of this. And I found it heart-breaking. I desperately wanted to keep the innocence with which I metaphorically flew the flag during that Olympic Year in 2012, but the more I watched, the less patriotic I felt. And this isn’t to say that any other countries are better behaved btw, Nigeria has a lot to answer for in terms of how it has – and continues – to treat its citizens. But then there are whispers of who finances some of these corrupt leaders and their weaponry… spoiler alert: there is often outside “help”.

Conspiracy theories aside, I finished the first three episodes (the final three are due for release this week) feeling less sad for Harry (who will be fine because he is a tall, white, posh white man) and Meghan (who will be fine because she is a stunning and clever woman who knows, as a Guardian writer commented, how to execute brand strategy better than the British Royal Family) and more sad for me. Me, who was born in the UK and yet hails from Nigeria. Who is stuck between wanting to celebrate the good things about the country I reside in and wondering what would have happened had the UK not interfered with many countries around the world, including causing chaos by stuffing together warring tribes to create “Nigeria”.

So I don’t know which flag to fly, although doing so seems pretty problematic anyway so maybe I’ll sit out the flag waving for now and just sit with my feelings for a little while longer.

Tola x

*This is Hebrew for ‘joy’, to assuage anyone thinking I am racist. I’m not, I promise. My best friend is Jewish…