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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed baby Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor into the world after months of speculation. As with the children of the Duchess of Cambridge, gossip surrounds the potential name and bad. But unlike these pregnancies, the focus has also been on the color of the skin. This is because Baby Archie is the first non-white child to be born in the British Royal Family.
Archie has three quarters of white, a quarter of black and yet his skin is white. Thanks to a very famous mother, most people will understand that, despite his appearance, he is half-breed and not white. To call it otherwise would be to erase Meghan, his ancestors and all their triumphs, their challenges and their experiences.
I am also a black quarter, but my half-black, half-white mother is not famous and so I spent my whole life dealing with my "invisible identity". My own pale skin makes me white and ethnically ambiguous.
It would be ignorant to pretend that it does not come with privileges. I am immune to a huge proportion of the discrimination experienced by Métis who have dark skin. Yet, my pale skin has never been my size, because it hides a part of me and my family which I am incredibly proud.
I do not identify myself in white (how could I?), So I feel angry when others do the same. Sometimes this is not done by malice, but by ignorance and presumptions emanating from a society that too often views things as black or white – literally! Other times, people have said that I should call myself white because my skin is white. Educate people that white is not just a term for a person's skin, but a person's ethnicity is not easy.
Much remains to be done to improve the way we speak about mixed race people. Terms such as "only", "just", "part" and "other" are frequently used. These reduce the person to fractions and portions. Mixed race people are only half or quarter in their biology, never in their value. Yet I still hear terms such as half-caste and quarter-caste. "Caste" means pure; to use this name is therefore to call a person who is partially impure, dirty and unworthy of respect.
As a child, there were few transient celebrities, but proudly mixed, to look at; Tina from S Club and Mel B from Spice Girls meet the expectations of many people with regard to complexion. In adolescence, I developed the obligation to declare my inheritance before anyone could say something careless or racist. As a woman, I learned to see my heritage in me. I had used to hate my nose shape, but once I realized it was the same as my beautiful tall Jamaican aunt Lil, I learned to like it.
Society must realize that just because someone looks like a certain race, it means that they are. I am so grateful that Archie can make us talk about ethnic ambiguity and favor polite questions or simple openness about ignorance and presumptions.
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