Revealing Britains Systemic Racism
Revealing Britains Systemic Racism applies an existing scholarly paradigm (systemic racism and the white racial frame) to assess the implications of Markles entry and place in the British royal family, including an analysis that bears on visual and material culture. The white racial frame, as it manifests in the UK, represents an important lens through which to map and examine contemporary racism and related inequities. By questioning the long-held, but largely anecdotal, beliefs about racial progressiveness in the UK, the authors provide an original counter-narrative about how Markles experiences as a biracial member of the royal family can help illumine contemporary forms of racism in Britain. Revealing Britains Systemic Racism identifies and documents the plethora of ways systemic racism continues to shape ecological spaces in the UK. Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin challenge romanticized notions of racial inclusivity by applying Feagins long-established work, aiming to make a unique and significant contribution to literature in sociology and in various other disciplines.
Kimberley Ducey, PhD, is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. She is a public sociologist, whose work has appeared in such journals as Canadian Ethnic Studies, Critical Criminology, and Genocide Studies and Prevention. Her work also appears in Animal Oppression, the Routledge Handbook of Public Criminologies, The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology, the Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, the Routledge International Handbook of Public Sociology, and Educating for Critical Consciousness. Her other books with Joe R. Feagin include Racist America (4th edn, Routledge, 2019), Elite White Men Ruling (Routledge, 2017), and Liberation Sociology (also with Hernn Vera; 3rd edn, 2014). Dr. Ducey has edited two books, George Yancy: A Critical Reader (2021, with Clevis Headley and Joe R. Feagin) and Systemic Racism Theory: Making Liberty, Justice, and Democracy Real (2017, with Ruth Thompson-Miller).
Joe R. Feagin, PhD, is Distinguished Professor and Ella C. McFadden Professor in Sociology at Texas A&M University. He has done much internationally recognized research on US racism, sexism, and political economy issues. He has written or co-written 74 scholarly books and 200-plus scholarly articles in his social science areas. His books include Systemic Racism (Routledge, 2006), White Party, White Government (Routledge, 2012), Latinos Facing Racism (Routledge, 2014, with Jos A. Cobas), How Blacks Built America (Routledge, 2015), Elite White Men Ruling (Routledge, 2017, with Kimberley Ducey), Racist America (4th edn, Routledge, 2019, with Kimberley Ducey), Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education (Routledge, 2020, with Edna B. Chun), and The White Racial Frame (3rd edn, Routledge, 2020). He is the recipient of a 2012 Soka Gakkai International-USA Social Justice Award, the 2013 American Association for Affirmative Actions Arthur Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award, and three major American Sociological Association awards: the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award (for research in the African American scholarly tradition), and the Public Understanding of Sociology Award. He was the 19992000 president of the American Sociological Association.
Revealing Britains Systemic Racism
The Case of Meghan Markle and the Royal Family
Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Kimberley Ducey and Joe R. Feagin to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-76545-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-76541-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-16743-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Garamond
by Newgen Publishing UK
For the global Black Lives Matter movement
Contents
On January 8, 2020, the Duke and Duchess of SussexPrince Harry and Meghan Markleannounced on social media that they intended to step back as senior royals and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen the Commonwealth, and [their] patronages. About an hour after their announcement, this statement from the queen followed: Discussions with The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage. We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through.
The House of Windsor forced a compromise of sorts on the Sussexes. The couple would divide their time between North America and the UK, retain their private patronages and associations, but would no longer be able to use their Royal Highness (HRH) titles or the phrase Sussex Royal in their public endeavors. The acclaimed royal expert Clive Irving has since called out the double standard, saying:
[I]ts been an atrocious act of hypocrisy to [take the view] that it wasnt right for them to use a brand, Sussex Royal, to monetise the royal name, because [Prince] Charles was the first person ever to do that in a serious way, with the Duchy brand of grocery items. It never seemed to strike him or anybody else in the Royal Family that it was hypocritical to attack Meghan and Harry for wanting to do their own brand, and in their case not to sell groceries but to do good work.
Harry was stripped of honorary military appointments and his role as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. Markle and Harry would no longer receive monies from the Sovereign Grant, which is funded by taxpayers and covers travel, employees salaries, and palace maintenance and services. The couple ultimately moved near Los Angeles, Markles hometown. They publicly stated they would continue to espouse the principles of the monarchy, even though as of March 21, 2020 they would no longer officially represent the queen.
In summer 2020, the much-anticipated book Finding Freedom, written by royal reporters Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, was published, purportedly chronicling key factors in the couples decision to leave the royal fold and the UK. The authors spoke to friends, aides, other confidants of the Sussexes, and the couple themselves.
Much has been made of Finding Freedoms supposed focus on racism as a divisive factor in the Sussexess decision to step down as senior royals. The book upset Markles most prominent white critics particularly for this reason (see ). However, direct and indirect mentions of race, ethnicity, or racism appear only on 32 pages in this 347-page book. Even then, most such references fill a mere sentence or two. This rather brief attention to Britains systemic racism has been enough to agitate much of the white establishment.