Markle and Willemse: Making sure racism doesn’t live happily ever after

What do Ashwin Willemse, Meghan Markle and Bishop Curry have in common? They refused to conform to white norms of behaviour

23 May 2018 - 07:55 By ranjeni munusamy
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Royal fan Joseph Afrane waits near the route of the carriage procession of Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle in Windsor on May 17 2018 - two days before the royal wedding.
Royal fan Joseph Afrane waits near the route of the carriage procession of Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle in Windsor on May 17 2018 - two days before the royal wedding.
Image: OLI SCARFF / AFP

There is no doubt that the wedding of Prince Harry and former actress Meghan Markle was extraordinary and rattled some in the British establishment.

The most powerful message from the way the couple planned their wedding was that this was a marriage between two cultures and a reflection of their personalities, not an assimilation of a “bi-racial” outsider into the British monarchy.

Most people in the United Kingdom welcomed the blending of the conservative traditions of the royal family with black American culture. But some others balked at being yanked out of their comfort zone when they least expected it – and in a place that is so quintessentially British, the centuries-old Windsor Castle.

The person who effortlessly revolutionised the wedding was Bishop Michael Curry, head of the US Episcopal Church, in an animated sermon on the power of love. Curry dared to colour outside the lines, delivering a political message on how redemptive love ought to overcome the inequalities and injustices in society.

Poverty, hunger and slavery are not words usually uttered at a wedding, less so in the presence of the Queen of England. But because the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex were already breaking down so many barriers with the modern-day fairytale, it opened the space for some frank talk in front of a global audience of up to two billion people. 

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