Meghan Markle 'let aide name drop Prince Harry' claims host

We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info

Meghan Markle sat down with actress and writer Issa Rae for the latest episode of her Spotify podcast, Archetypes. During their conversation the two women discussed the labels often pinned on black women, connecting through their lives in Los Angeles and their experiences in the entertainment industry. Issa opened up about how she has been labelled in the workplace, explaining that a colleague had described her as “particular” — picky or liking things done in a certain way — something that Meghan related to. 

While the Duchess admitted to being “particular”, she revealed how she often finds herself “cowering and tiptoeing into a room,” explaining that her voice changes in order to sound less “demanding”. 

She explained: “The thing that I find the most embarrassing is when you’re saying a sentence but the intonation goes up like it’s a question. 

“You’re like, oh my god, stop, stop whispering and tiptoeing around it. Just say what it is that you need. You’re allowed to set a boundary you’re allowed to be clear. It does not make you demanding, it does not make you difficult. It makes you clear!” 

Issa added: “…It’s just another way of cowering from your power.”

The writer, whose show ‘Insecure’ was described by Meghan as a “masterpiece”, went on to confess that she doesn’t feel like she’s “allowed to be angry” in certain moments. 

She said: “I can’t lose my cool, I can’t do that, especially as a black woman, but also just even as a public figure now. People are looking for ways to justify their perception of you. 

“…I want to be allowed to have that emotion because it’s natural, it’s an emotion, of course, it shouldn’t be internalised. Absolutely not. So that’s something I’m still wrestling with.”

Earlier in the podcast, the Duchess recounted her shock having learnt about the findings of Gender Studies professor Dr Safiya U. Noble, who suggested Google was contributing to spreading stereotypes about black women. 

In the opening monologue of this week’s episode of Archetypes, Meghan said: “Her findings in this book had my jaw on the floor. She established that when you type in a question on the Google search engine, it would try to guess what your question would be. Sort of like the modern-day, technological Madlib, so to fill in the blank, to be intuitive for you, she typed in: ‘Why are black women so…’ 

“The autofill from the computer, the machine trying to guess your thoughts, maybe shape your thoughts, completed her search with these options: why are black women so loud? Why are black women so mean? Why are black women so angry? Those were the seeds being planted, this idea that a black woman must be angry.”

She added: “An angry black woman when we all know that sometimes things make you feel angry or sad or hurt or upset. And that’s not a gendered or racially-specific feeling. Yet this trope of the angry black woman persists and, as we saw in this book, it was being reinforced constantly in ways we hadn’t even realised.

“And from that, I started to dig deeper – where does this idea even come from? Why has it been attributed to black women? And why do some black women cower into it, lean into it or sometimes even play into it?”

During the podcast, Meghan asked honest questions about the judgements often made about black women, speaking with Issa Rae, comedian Ziwe Fumudoh and Professor Emily Bernard. 

Source: Read Full Article