Symbolic or meaningless? What black Britons think of Meghan's marriage to Harry

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. They will get married later this month. [Reuters]

Lawyer Gaile Walters has no time for the British monarchy but still believes the wedding of American actress Meghan Markle to Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, Prince Harry, marks an important moment for Britain’s black community.

“It has to be significant. The fact of someone black being married into the royal family represents a widening and a diversion and an inclusion that it’s never had before,” Walters told Reuters as she shopped in Brixton, south London.

“I’m still not pro-monarchy at all because I don’t think anybody is born to rule. However, I do understand symbolism and this is very powerful.”

The upcoming marriage of the British prince, sixth-in-line to the British throne, to Markle, whose father is white and mother is African-American, has been heralded as demonstrating how Britain has become more egalitarian and racially mixed.

Just 60 years ago, marrying a divorcee was considered unacceptable for a British royal, and only in 2013 did it become permissible to wed a Catholic without being removed from the line of succession.

So Markle’s entry into an exclusively white royal family, who wield hugely emotional symbolic power in Britain, should not be underestimated, said Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging.

“It represents a real change in the messaging to young people growing up in Britain and that idea that blackness and Britishness are mutually exclusive,” she told Reuters.

“I think for me when I was younger that would have made a huge difference to me psychologically in my sense of legitimacy and confidence that this is my country.”

The wedding comes at a time race issues have been prominent in Britain. Last month saw the 25th anniversary of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence by white racists which led to London’s police force being labelled institutionally racist by an inquiry due to its botched handling of the case.

It was also 50 years since the infamous 'Rivers of blood' speech by politician Enoch Powell in which he warned that 'the black man will have the whip hand over the white man' if immigration was not stopped.

The British government has also found itself mired in a scandal about treatment of some descendants of the 'Windrush generation' of Caribbean migrants who were invited to Britain after World War Two but have been left without documents and denied basic rights.

Markle, whose maternal ancestors were slaves, and Harry attended a memorial service to mark the Lawrence anniversary and there has been much commentary about how attitudes have changed since the days of Powell. But others say the Windrush episode betrays the true picture.

“(The wedding) means nothing. It really is a non-event in terms of what it means for society,” Kehinde Andrews, an associate professor of sociology at Birmingham City University and author on race issues. He described racism 'as British as a cup of tea'.

“What on earth could we possibly be celebrating in the fact that there’s a splash of coffee in the premier symbol of whiteness in the UK?

“That’s for me the problem with a lot of the coverage of this wedding. The monarchy is an institution. Adding a black face, one black face, one very light-skinned, pretty black face is not going to change the institution.”

A survey for the British Future think-tank last month suggested most Britons would barely notice Markle’s ethnicity and the vast majority welcomed it.

However, 12 per cent of those questioned thought someone of mixed race marrying into the royal family was bad and 25 per cent would be uncomfortable with their child to having a serious relationship or marrying someone of a different race.

It also found 33 per cent of ethnic minority respondents thought racial prejudice was as high as when Lawrence was murdered. In an interview, London mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, said most institutions in Britain had 'problems with institutional racism'.