Meghan Markle and Mariah Carey Discuss What It Means to Them to Be Biracial

In the newest episode of her podcast Archetypes, Meghan Markle sits down to speak with the one and only Mariah Carey. Early in their conversation—which revolves around the word "diva"—Meghan and Mariah discuss the fact that they both had one Black parent and one white parent.

The Duchess of Sussex tells Mariah, "You were so formative for me. Representation matters so much. 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… Someone kind of looks like me.'"

Mariah then asks Meghan if she could tell that Mariah was Black and white, and Meghan replies with a resounding "Yes." She explains, "Yes. I could feel that. Yeah, even at that young age."

Meghan's father Thomas Markle is white, and her mother Doria Ragland is Black; Mariah's father Alfred Roy Carey is Black, and her mother Patricia Carey is white, or, as Mariah says in Archetypes, "My mother is Irish all the way back to the Blarney Stone."

A little later in the conversation, Meghan tells Mariah, "for us, it's very different because we're light skinned. You're not treated as a Black woman. You're not treated as a white woman. You sort of fit in between." Mariah says, "I always thought it should be okay to say I'm mixed. Like it should be okay to say that. But people want you to choose."

This is not the first time Meghan has spoken about her biracial, or mixed, identity. In an essay in 2015, she wrote, "To describe something as being black and white means it is clearly defined. Yet when your ethnicity is black and white, the dichotomy is not that clear. In fact, it creates a grey area. Being biracial paints a blurred line that is equal parts staggering and illuminating."

She also wrote of her acting career, "I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn't book a job."

Mariah, too, has been candid about her identity since the start of her career. In a 1997 song "Outside," she sings, "It's hard to explain / Inherently it's just always been strange / Neither here nor there / Always somewhat out of place everywhere / Ambiguous / Without a sense of belonging to touch / Somewhere halfway /Feeling there's no one completely the same."

Listen to the full conversation on Spotify:

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