1 Accusation Prince Harry Left out of ‘Spare’ Has Some Saying the Royal Family Should Attempt Peacemaking
TL;DR:
- Prince Harry didn’t discuss the claim a royal wondered about his son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor’s skin color in Spare.
- Meghan Markle and Prince Harry told Oprah the color of Archie’s skin was a topic of conversation among royals.
- Some say Prince Harry not discussing the accusation in his memoir means the royal family should attempt peacemaking.
- Prince Harry also said in a Spare interview the comments from the Oprah interview were misinterpreted by the British press.
Spare is here, and it’s not without explosive claims from Prince Harry. However, one previously mentioned accusation has been left out of the 416-page tome. The Duke of Sussex doesn’t address the claim there were conversations and “concerns” about “how dark” his and Meghan Markle’s son Archie’s skin would be. Why some say leaving it out of Spare is grounds for the royal family to try reconciliation. Plus, why Harry feels the British press “turned it into” something it wasn’t.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle claimed there’d been ‘concerns and conversations’ about Archie’s skin color in Oprah interview
Among the bombshells in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2021 Oprah interview was one about their now-3-year-old son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. They claimed a member of the royal family raised “concerns” about Archie’s skin color before he was born in May 2019.
“They were concerned that if he were too brown, that would be a problem? Are you saying that?” Oprah asked Meghan.
“If that’s the assumption you’re making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one, which was really hard to understand, right?” Meghan replied after noting Harry had told her about the incident.
‘Now is the time’ for the royal family to try reconciling with Harry, former royal correspondent says
Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC, believes the royal family should attempt peacemaking with Harry immediately.
“Now is the time for it, ironically,” he said (via The New York Times). “If they really want to seize the initiative, if they really want to shift the dial, they’ve got to somehow rise above it.”
And it won’t be easy. “It’s going to be incredibly difficult for them,” Hunt said. Not to mention it will be something of a gamble. The risk, he told the publication, is that the royal family could their air of mystery because of Harry’s willingness to share publicly.
“It’s harder to have that mystery when we know they fight and call each other names,” Hunt said.
Prince Harry denied accusing the royal family of racism in ‘Spare’ interviews — ‘unconscious bias’
In both ITV and CBS 60 Minutes interviews, the Duke of Sussex called the Oprah interview claim “unconscious bias.”
Harry, 38, told Anderson Cooper in a Jan. 8 60 Minutes interview that he and Meghan don’t believe the “comment,” “experience,” or “opinion” was “based on racism.” Instead, he said it was based on “unconscious bias.”
Harry remarked the British media’s reaction to the claim had been “fairy typical” after the Oprah interview aired in March 2021 (via CBS News). “There was, like, a hunt for the royal racist.”
“But I think that you speak to the majority — maybe not all — but the majority of mixed-race couples around the world, that the White side of the family would wonder, whether talking openly about it or amongst themselves, what their kids are gonna look like,” he continued.
“The key word here was ‘concern,’ as opposed to ‘curiosity,'” Harry added. “But the way that the British press, what they turned it into, was not what it–not what it was.”
The claim from Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview about Archie’s skin color led to Prince William ditching the royal family’s “never complain, never explain” motto and saying the royal family wasn’t racist.
“Very few at the palace are likely to believe that he wasn’t trying to send some missiles that implied racism in the early stages,” Eric Schiffer, chair of Reputation Management Consultants, said (via Newsweek).
“This was a global media perception based upon his accusations and the sensitivities about race that pervade the globe,” he continued, calling Harry a “sophisticated media communicator who was well aware of how that would land.”
