Meghan Markle Says She Was “Treated Like a Black Woman” After She Started Dating Prince Harry

Duchess Meghan and Mariah Carey opened up about their experiences as people of mixed race for the second episode of Meghan's Spotify podcast, Archetypes.

The conversation, titled "The Duality of Diva," also shed a light on what it meant to both women to be called a diva in the press.

Carey told Markle that constantly moving when she was younger made it difficult for her to feel like she fit in. "It would be more of the Black area of town or then you could be where my mom chose to live, were the more, the white neighborhoods. And I didn't fit in anywhere at all," she said, per People.

Markle sympathized with her position, saying, "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 kind of looks like me.'"

Markle referenced another star in Hollywood who is also mixed race. "I had read this article about Halle Berry, and they were asking her how she felt being treated as a mixed-race woman in the world. And her response was her saying, 'Well, your experience through the world is how people view you.' So she said because she was darker in color, she was being treated as a Black woman, not as a mixed woman," the duchess said. "And I think 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."

She reflected on how that perspective began to change once she was publicly linked to her now husband, 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," she said. "Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted."

Carey added that her identity often felt in conflict with what other people wanted from her. "As a mixed woman, because I always thought it should be okay to say I'm mixed. Like, it should be okay to say that," the "Fantasy" singer said. "But people want you to choose."

Meghan released the debut episode of Archetypes last week, featuring a conversation between her and longtime friend Serena Williams.

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