Link: https://youtu.be/-IVATsxtkgU
By: Alexa Forte and Divya Patibandla
Alexa Forte: Hi, my name is Alexa. I’m a sophomore from New Jersey. I’m studying accounting, and I’m minoingr in Spanish for business and fashion and retail studies. One of the reasons I took this class is because I come from a very white and privileged hometown, and I believe that is important to educate yourself and learn about cultures and systemic injustice throughout our world today.
Divya Patibandla: I am Divya Patibandla. I’m a biochemistry major and I have a minor in Spanish as well. The main reason I took this class is to kind of like further like my ideas and I just wanted to like, learn more about I don’t know like, how we relate these issues in our modern society and how it applies to everyone, not just like certain groups of people. I grew up in a, I grew up in a predominantly like white area, like my high school was 2000 people but there was only a certain amount of people of color, you could literally count them on your hands so I definitely know what it feels to be like alienated in our society and stuff.
Alexa Forte: Personally for me, I am Jewish, although that is not super cultural and I’m not a huge alienation from the rest of society I dealt with a lot of personal discrimination within my hometown where people would coin names and stereotypes for me and did not originally think it was offensive but I did in fact take a lot of offense to these names. And so that is the reason that this course hits kind of close to home for me
Divya Patibandla: For my personal experience, both my parents are immigrants who came from India when they were about five years old. Both of my grandparents like live with me or in the area so they’ve definitely told me a lot about my culture from a young age. So, I definitely understand what it’s like to be an Asian-American growing up in our society. But although I can never fully understand what it means to be like a Black person or a Latino in our society, like I can relate to some degree and, this is why I think it’s really important that we take the time to educate ourselves over topics like these, and how they relate to systemic injustice.
Alexa Forte: So, Divya, you said that you had a great Diary of Systemic Showcase that you found in our society today and if you just want to talk a little bit about that that would be awesome.
Divya Patibandla: Right, yeah, one of the most interesting things I came across when I was working on my Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase was basically I focused on Megan Markle’s mistreatment within, by, like at the hands of the British institution and palace officials.
One thing that I found was super shocking was, while, during her pregnancy, at one point she was experiencing extremely like suicidal thoughts; she was like suffering with mental illness, and she recognized this—was strong enough to recognize this—and asked for help. She told Prince Harry and he was like yeah I think you should like try to find some help, I think this is like an issue that needs to be dealt with. And, so she went to palace officials because there’s, when she was speaking about this in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, she kind of uncovered how, like the process you need to go through in order to do anything in the palace. So she went to the institution, said she was suffering and experiencing suicidal thoughts and asked for help.
And they actually denied her help because, and actually the institution did not give a reason. So, Alexa, how do you, like, what are your initial thoughts?
Alexa Forte: Honestly, I didn’t even know about the situation until we had discuss it previously and I believe that it is wrong to dismiss anybody’s mental health issues because mental health is such an important factor I think especially, in society, in society today given COVID and being a college student we’ve probably experienced our own mental health problems and it is so easy for college students to be able to reach out and get that help and for royalty not even to be able to shed light on any of her mental health problems and to be turned away from the institution, I think that’s very discriminating in a way, against her mental health, and everybody should be able to be taken care of and be able to reach their resources that they need it so.
Divya Patibandla: Yeah, I definitely agree and something that I learned after watching the full interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle, was that after she had gone to the institution and was denied help the first time, she actually went to the human resources department after and said, hey, basically was like hey, I’m still struggling and the institution denied me help, so I’m looking to you guys because I’m really struggling right now. And they basically told her, because you’re not a paid employee of the Institution we can’t provide you with any care or any help. I think to her, you could, when she was speaking about this, you could see the hurt in her face and you can see how she was barely holding it together but she was trying to for the sake of the interview and to share her story and share her message. So I think that’s, that’s really powerful in and of itself
Alexa Forte: That also makes me raise the question then, because obviously she’s not the only royal woman within the family, how maybe her experience has been different than Kate’s and if there was any bias or structural injustice that she faced because she is not white like Kate is and she comes from a different cultural background.
Divya Patibandla: I definitely agree after reading like various articles from the New York Time, New York Times, and stuff, I can say with confidence that she was absolutely, treated, mistreated, and when compared to Kate Middleton, her sister in law, she absolutely was portrayed differently by the media and the institution did not take the steps to portray her in a different light. For instance like anytime anything bad or like in a negative light would come out about Duchess Kate Middleton, the Institution would not hesitate to make a statement, and like clarify exactly what happened to defend her. However, like throughout Duchess Meghan Markle’s experiences with the Institution, time and time again, they showed that they would not defend her. And, they actually said at some point in the interview, Meghan was like, she asked the Institution, hey, would I be allowed to go have lunch with a couple of my friends. I have not left the palace and like, I’ve left the palace twice in four months, I just, I need to be around people like who care about me and they said they actually denied her that privilege. They called it a privilege, first of all, and they denied her that, because they felt that the media coverage was just way too much, she was being exposed to much. And she was failing to understand how she was being exposed if she was barely leaving the house. And at this point, she just recognized that the palace officials and the Institution itself, were never going to truly defend her like they would for Duchess Kate Middleton or any other royal family member.
Alexa Forte: And I think that title Duchess shows that essentially like the media often catches people with a title of that power, you know like, it’s kind of like a celebrity back at home, the media is often covering everybody with the titles of singers, pop stars stuff like that and I think in England, their equivalent is Duchess, and for Kate to be having the media covering her life and stuff and then for them to deny a simple like trip to Duchess Meghan is just ridiculous, unfair, unjust, and just so many other issues behind it that I think we can shed light on with a couple of our examples that we found online with images to kind of get further into it.
Divya Patibandla: Right, yeah so just for a comparison with how Kate and Meghan were mistreated, these are some newspaper articles actually shown side by side, discussing this same concept but how you can see how Kate is being portrayed in a much more positive light compared to Duchess Meghan Markle, who is clearly being treated in a more negative light. So for example this first one is talking about how they both have been cradling their baby bumps.
Princess Kate, or I’m sorry, excuse me Duchess Kate her article says, “not too long to go, pregnant Kate tenderly cradles her baby bump, while wrapping up her royal duties ahead of maternity leave, and William confirms she is due at any minute now.” And while Meghan Markle is seen doing the same exact thing, cradling her baby bump, the article title reads, “Why can’t Meghan Markle keep her hands off her bump, experts tackle the question that has got the nation talking: is it pride, vanity, acting, or a new age bonding technique?” Another newspaper article that was shown from the same source, but written at different times read that Duchess Kate’s article said, “Kate’s morning sickness cure? Prince William gifted an avocado for pregnant Duchess.” Meghan Markle’s article read, “Meghan Markle’s beloved avocado, avocado, link to human rights abuse and drought, millennial shame. So I think just seeing those titles and seeing the comparison and the differences in how the, the Institution, allows the Duchesses is to be portrayed so differently really sheds light,on how, on the mistreatment of Meghan Markle because she is a person of color. I think, yeah, it’s definitely something that needs to be like, called to attention and stuff in our society.
Alexa Forte: And I think it’s interesting that we can also compare this back to the stuff that we’ve learned in class. I know that we might have talked about before a little bit about One versus the Other and the subaltern. In my experience with reading this, I linked a lot of this to those acts similar of identifying someone as a subaltern because it seems as, in this situation, that Duchess Meghan is being colonized by a larger power. And that power that is maybe colonizing her and suppressing her and putting all of these discriminatory actions upon her tends to be like the royal family, the Institution, the people denying her of privileges. And essentially just all of this negative light that is being shone on her is happening from not only the institution, but the people that live in and populate England and of itself that followed the royal family. So I definitely saw that similarity with Spivack’s subaltern theory in this situation.
Divya Patibandla: Yeah. I definitely, I related this more to deBeauvoir’s theory of “the One” and “the Other.” In this sense, I saw the Institution, and the like palace officials as “the One,” and they singled out Meghan Markle as “the Other.”I saw this time and time again with how they kind of, they mistreated her, they singled her out compared to other family members of the royal family. Just in the little everyday things when she was discussing it in her interview, I think it was really obvious that she was seen as different in their eyes.
Alexa Forte: Agreed. And I think in the future, and dealing with all this information and us learning it as people in the United States as college students, and maybe such like a significant way. I feel like it’s important that as the audience that’s reading this, that we then do our best to educate ourselves and have discussions like these, so that maybe others can learn from this experience that what is happening to Duchess Meghan is not okay, it is not acceptable. She has a right and deserves to be listened to, and heard too, and her mental health problems need to be addressed. And she should be in the same positive light that her sister-in-law is.
Divya Patibandla: Yes, and I totally agree with that and I also just want to draw on the fact that one of the main reasons that Duchess Meghan Markle and Prince Harry decided to dissociate from the royal family was because prior to the birth of their son Archie, the Institution actually raised questions about how dark Archie’s skin would be, and what that would mean for the royal family. And they brought up these questions at least two times with Prince Harry who then relayed the message to Meghan, who was just extremely hurt, and shameful that this, it was shameful that this even happened, but when Meghan shared this information I was honestly stunned. And obviously like being someone of, like, darker, of a darker skin complexion like this just raised so many questions in me because I was just so concerned for like our future and if this is like still happening in today’s society have we really come that far from, like, all of the issues we had and like with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s? And that was just really appalling for me.
Alexa Forte: And it’s crazy to even just think about like somebody marrying the love of their life, and somebody else is questioning why their marriage, their future, their family, and it’s not every single day that you see every single marriage being put into question. Right, like in the past, obviously we know certain cultures, religions, it tends to be, it tended to be, same religion, same culture, same color. Obviously, that is not the case in modern day anymore, which is amazing I’m happy that we’re having this world that’s full of culture that we are becoming the melting pot that the United States says we are, and that across the world. Right? It’s just, it’s something, it’s new and exciting and everybody should be educated in the same sense, but it’s just crazy to think that somebody could question, somebody else’s life when they have no say when it’s not their experience and why do they get to comment on somebody else’s happiness?
Divya Patibandla: I totally agree. Yeah, this is a question that Oprah definitely raised, she was like what gives, what gives the British Institution this authority to question, to first of all question on the skin complexion of your future son? And asking what that would mean for the royal family? Like, how could you insinuate that having a darker skin complexion would mean anything different? And actually what I found interesting was that prior to Archie’s birth they actually changed, a title, um I believe it was the one of the fifth titles or something, but they actually changed the title so that Archie, when he was born, he wouldn’t actually be given, given a title like previous generations. So they, the Institution, ensured that he would not be given a title, nor financial stability. And just like, I don’t know, hearing those words out loud.
Alexa Forte: He hasn’t even lived his life yet, and they’ve already been making decisions for him.
Divya Patibandla: Exactly, yeah
Alexa Forte: Based on his skin color.
Divya Patibandla Mm hmm. It’s just, it was just appalling to hear and seeing this at such a national, international, like level, it was just very very concerning. Especially at the hands of an institution with so much power, I think that’s something that we all just need to recognize. And obviously like systemic injustices occur every single day, whether it be like incarceration, like I can’t even, there are so many countless examples, but the fact that this is happening at a much larger level than any of us could have ever imagined is just still very concerning and something that needs to be talked about.
Alexa Forte: I agree, and that’s why I really appreciate this class and being able to have these conversations, and being able to meet with you and talk about it as well. Because it needs to be addressed.
Divya Patibandla: Absolutely.
Alexa Forte: And we need to be educated. Thank you for listening!
Divya Patibandla: Thank you for listening and thank you for your time!