Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is said by a leading racial equality campaigner to have had to “learn how to be black” when she entered the royal family.
Sir Trevor Phillips, 69, also said the former ‘Suits’ actress, 41, had “made a bit of a mess of it” and claimed she “never regarded herself particularly as black” before she started to date Prince Harry – which he also said was “understandable” due to her upbringing.
The broadcaster and former chairperson of the Equality and Human Rights Commission made the claims during an appearance on TalkTV’s ‘Piers Morgan: Uncensored’ show, and said: “I think people mistake who Meghan Markle is, she herself said that until she became this princess, she never regarded herself particularly as black and that’s understandable.
“She grew up in Los Angeles in the most wealthy black enclave anywhere in the United States – Park View, Windsor Hills... she went to a private Roman Catholic school and in a sense race was never really a part of her background.”
Sir Trevor added “anyone who came from a black background” knew that the issue of race wasn’t Meghan’s “territory”.
Referencing the duchess’ famous claim a member of the royals asked how dark the skin of her and Harry’s unborn son Archie, now four, would be, he said: “When she made this supposedly incendiary claim about somebody asking what colour Archie’s skin would be, well actually every black family... the minute you know somebody is coming, that’s what you’re speculating about. For white people it's hair and eye colour.
“The point I really want to make about Meghan Markle is that she had to learn how to be black on the job, as it were, and I think she made a bit of a mess of it.
“She didn’t take advice, and that in some sense is why I think (she and Harry) squandered the opportunity to demonstrate something important about this country...
“We have the largest, uniquely mixed-race population anywhere in the developed world that has come about through romance rather than coercion and they could have been standard bearers for that.”
Meghan, who also has two-year-old daughter Lilibet with Harry, 38, last year said about her mixed-race identity on her now axed Spotify podcast ‘Archetypes’: “I mean, if there’s any time in my life that it's been more focused on my race, it's only once I started dating my husband.
“Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a black woman. “Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”