The Duke and Duchess of Sussex may no longer be members of the royal family, but they still hold their role as the president and vice president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, and this week the organisation hosted a conversation with young people to discuss the Black Lives Matter protests, injustice, and equal rights.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joined Chrisann Jarrett, QCT trustee and co-founder and co-CEO of We Belong; Alicia Wallace, director of Equality Bahamas; Mike Omoniyi, founder and CEO of the Common Sense Network; and Abdullahi Alim, who leads the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers network of emerging young leaders in Africa and the Middle East.
Harry said, “You are the next generation of leadership which this world so desperately needs as it goes through this healing process. We can’t deny or ignore the fact that all of us have been educated to see the world differently. However, once you start to realize that there is that bias there, then you need to acknowledge it, you need to do the work to become more aware…so that you can help stand up for something that is so wrong and should not be acceptable in our society today.”
“It’s not just in the big moments; it’s in the quiet moments where racism and unconscious bias lies and thrives,” Markle added. “It makes it confusing for a lot of people to understand the role that they play in that, both passively and actively.”
“We’re going to have to be a little uncomfortable right now, because it’s only in pushing through that discomfort that we get to the other side of this and find the place where a high tide raises all ships,” she continued. “Equality does not put anyone on the back foot, it puts us all on the same footing, which is a fundamental human right.”
Alim, who is based in Australia, has urged future leaders to learn from those who have tried to address systemic issues before, to value lived experience, and to remember that “in any situation, it is always best to allow implicated groups to determine what they think the best course of action is.”
Meghan was quick to agree, adding that it is for people to “know when to lead and know when to listen.”
This is not the first time the couple has spoken out on Black Lives Matter.
Sharing a heartfelt video in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Markle delivered as a virtual graduation speech to her old high school. She released the full speech to media, where she spoke candidly about the protests, her own experience witnessing the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and her high expectations for the graduating class to join the fight for an end to racial injustice and police brutality.
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“I wasn’t sure what I could say to you,” she began. “I wanted to say the right thing. And I was really nervous that I wouldn’t, or that it would get picked apart, and I realized – the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing. Because George Floyd’s life mattered, and Breonna Taylor’s life mattered, and Philando Castile’s life mattered, and Tamir Rice’s life mattered, and so did so many other people whose names we know and whose names we don’t know. Stephon Clark. His life mattered.”
At the Diana Awards earlier this month, Harry discussed how his generation has not done enough to dismantle racism.
“My wife said recently that our generation and the ones before us haven’t done enough to right the wrongs of the past. I, too, am sorry—sorry that we haven’t got the world to a place you deserve it to be,” he said. “Institutional racism has no place in our societies, yet it is still endemic. Unconscious bias must be acknowledged without blame to create a better world for all of you.”
Watch the discussion in full and find out more about the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust here.
