Why Meghan Markle Does Not Give Me Hope

Most immigrants to the UK are not welcomed like she is.

Tomorrow, Prince Harry and his American fiancée, Meghan Markle, will get married, which you likely already know if you are active on any bit of social media or watch the news.
But here’s a piece of news you didn’t know, nor would ever have any reason to know: The day after tomorrow I leave my husband — a British citizen like Harry — and go to India, just so I can apply for a spouse visa that will allow us, two married people, to live in the UK for two and a half years (because that’s how long you can last on a spouse visa here). Here’s something even weirder: I am already in the UK — legally — on a marriage visitor visa that I got earlier this year when I got married to the love of my life in a small coastal town here. Now, you’d think that if you were already in a country, legally, and you had a visa that was active for a while, you could apply to switch to a longer visa, right?
No.
Not if you are an immigrant in the UK. Especially not if you come from a country with a weaker economy that cannot compete with the might of the British Pound. Because let me tell you something else: The spouse visa costs a little over £1,600. That’s $2,160. And there’s an NHS health fee that’s another $850 or so. And you know the absolute best part? You cannot get a refund on that fee if your application is rejected.

First of all, please stop talking about Meghan Markle as if she is a regular person with regular vulnerabilities that haunt us women of color. For one thing, she is a pale person (as am I) and we ALWAYS have to take less shit than darker women. She is also skinny and incredibly attractive by conventional standards of beauty. Finally, she has been a celebrity in her homeland — she has money, influence, popularity, and privileges that come with that. Yes, she may be a woman of color, but her circumstances are so exceptional that I cannot find myself in her shoes even in my most delusional fantasy. This is not an ad hominem attack on her. I quite like and admire some of the things she has said in the past. It is simply that her experiences, at their worst, are better than the experiences of most WoC.

And yet, this lack of identification with her does not stop me from being completely outraged when people talk about how she gives us women of color “hope.” What hope? Of marrying into a family with worse issues than everyone else’s families put together? Of living under your in-laws’ approval and permission for everything for the rest of your life? Of never getting to be yourself in public, for a moment? Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.
But more importantly, this whole “hope” narrative reinforces the idea that we, women of color, can only redeem ourselves by the romantic validation of a white man. If that in itself isn’t toxic enough, Harry being a prince also draws from the older, more universal, equally toxic narrative of marrying up into the heteropatriarchy as a fairytale — the “prince” being a happy shorthand for a larval patriarch to be domesticated before he becomes a full-blown king and father-figure.
But perhaps the hardest thing about watching the Royal Wedding unfold is hearing people talk about how progressive the monarchy has become, and how they are above racism and xenophobia and petty nationalism.
I am here to tell you, without a single shred of doubt, that they are not.

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