CNN anchor Don Lemon has praised Meghan Markle for her recent comments about race during her “Archetypes” podcast interview with Mariah Carey.
Markle explained in the chat: “For us it’s so different because we’re light-skinned, you’re not treated as a Black woman, you’re not treated as a white woman, you sort of fit in-between.
“If there’s any time in my life that’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband,” she went on, referencing Prince Harry.
“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.”
Lemon then discussed the remarks on Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s “New Day” with his co-anchor Brianna Keilar asking him for his thoughts, given how vocal he has been on the matter in the past.
CNN’s @donlemon joins @brikeilarcnn and @JohnBerman to discuss Meghan Markle’s "eye-opening" podcast on race. Watch: https://t.co/U42WBxWtPU
— CNN (@CNN) August 31, 2022
Lemon shared, “Look, there are a couple of things at work here. There’s colourism, which I talk about. There’s colourism in the Black community, but there’s also… in some ways, she’s saying that she had privilege and so therefore it didn’t apply to her because it never happened to her. Right?
“She was a mixed woman. People didn’t really know how to react to her. They didn’t know if she was Black or white, but she didn’t get the full Black treatment because people weren’t sure that she was, you know, Black.
“I think most African Americans probably looked at her and said, ‘Oh, I know that’s a Black woman,’ but I think the larger culture may not have realized that.”
Lemon continued, “What she is coming from is a place of privilege where she did not have to deal with racism until she married a white man. And she’s got all this criticism and all this attention. And suddenly she understood or understands what it’s like to be part of a group of people, especially women in this country or in Europe, who are discriminated against. So I think it was eye-opening for her. It’s certainly real.”
“And you know, it’s interesting, Mariah Carey has a very similar experience. I remember when Mariah Carey came about in the ’90s, people didn’t know what to do with her. In their podcast, she talks about even people not knowing how to do her hair. And the people who were in charge of her and trying to establish her as an artist didn’t really know how to market her. Do they market her as a Black woman? Do they market her as a mixed woman? Or as a white woman? They didn’t really know how to do it,” the journalist added.
“So I think it’s an I actually I think it’s an eye-opening podcast and I commend Meghan Markle for going there, even though it is a bit shocking that at 30-something years of age, she is just understanding what it’s like to be a Black woman in America. It’s a bit surprising to me.”
