In her latest Archetypes podcast episode, the Duchess of Sussex dug deeper into the labels often pinned on black women as she welcomed actress and writer Issa Rae.
Since its launch, Meghan Markle's Archetypes podcast series has been a smashing success, featuring a constellation of high-profile stars such as Serena Williams, Margaret Cho, and Robin Thede.
Who's the latest guest on Archetypes?
After the success of the very first episodes, Meghan marked her comeback with an episode referring to racism towards black women. According to the Mirror, Meghan Markle sat with actress and writer Issa Rae for the latest episode of her Spotify podcast, Archetypes.
During the episode, Meghan spoke with Issa Rae, comedian Ziwe Fumudoh, and Professor Emily Bernard and asked open-minded questions about the stereotypes that black women have to regularly confront in their lives.
Specifically, Meghan and Issa Rae, who rose to fame with the YouTube web series Awkward Black Girl, were connected by their experiences in the entertainment industry and their lifestyles in Los Angeles as they spoke about the stereotypes that are frequently applied to black women.
Issa disclosed how she had been labeled at work, saying that a coworker had called her ‘particular’— picky or liking things are done in a specific way — something that Meghan said to feel sympathized.
The Duchess' view on discrimination
While the Duchess admitted to being ‘particular’, she revealed how she often finds herself ‘cowering and tiptoeing into a room,’ which is the most ‘ embarrassing’ habit of her. She also added that her voice changes to sound less 'demanding'.
The mum of two clarified:
'But I also know that I will find myself cowering and tip-toeing into a room, where I don’t know if you ever do the thing that I find the most embarrassing, where you’re saying a sentence, but the intonation goes up like it’s a question.'
Issa agreed: ‘...It's just another way of cowering from your power.’
The writer, whose show Insecure was described by Meghan as a 'masterpiece', continued to confess that she doesn’t feel like she’s ‘allowed to be angry' in certain situations.
She explained:
‘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.
The media personality candidly shared that she's still 'wrestling with emotion':
‘...I want to be allowed to have that emotion because it's natural, it's an emotion, and of course, it shouldn't be internalized. Not. So that's something I'm still wrestling with.’
The News reports that earlier in the podcast, the Duchess, who says she has 43% Nigerian roots, described her surprise at learning about the research of Dr. Safiya U. Noble, claiming Google was disseminating prejudices against black women.
Meghan started this week’s episode by expressing her shock at the finding, saying: ‘Her findings in this book had my jaw on the floor.'
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 realized.'
Meghan, who reportedly faced initial opposition from the Royal Family given her 'race and background', emotionally questioned:
‘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?’
In late 2020, following their infamous Royal exit, Meghan and Prince Harry signed an eye-watering deal with Spotify to produce the podcast series, which is estimated to earn the pair a whopping £18 million.
Read more:
⋙ King Charles III will be 'ruthless' if Harry and Meghan continue to do this
⋙ Meghan Markle shares sweet wishes for Lilibet's future in new interview
⋙ This is what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle want to do next
⋙ Meghan Markle took this legal step to protect Prince Harry
⋙ Meghan Markle's debut podcast beat Joe Rogan to top US Spotify chart
