Meghan Markle Says She Was Not Regarded as Being Black Until Prince Harry Came Into the Mix

Meghan Markle hosted Grammy Award-winning singer Mariah Carey on the second episode of her Spotify podcast, Archetypes.

People reports The Duchess of Sussex and the pop star met for a conversation titled “The Duality of Diva,” where the two women spoke about the negative connotations concerning the word diva and their experiences growing up biracial.

Markle told Carey how excited she was when Carey hit stardom because it meant there was someone like her in the spotlight.

“You were so formative for me. Representation matters so much,” Markle said. “But when you are a woman and you don’t see a woman who looks like you somewhere in a position of power or influence, or even just on the screen — because we know how influential media is — you came onto the scene, I was like ‘Oh, my gosh. Someone kind of looks like me.'”

Markle continued bringing up actress Halle Berry who said in an interview that although she is biracial, due to her dark skin, she has always been treated like a Black woman. That led Markle to say that she didn’t understand what it was like to be treated as a Black woman until she began dating Prince Harry.

“I mean, if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband. Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman,” Meghan said, referencing her relationship with Prince Harry. “Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”