Black Americans' complex response to Harry and Meghan's Netflix series

Bryndis Roberts watched the Harry & Meghan documentary series with tears in her eyes.

An avid fan of the royals since the days of Princess Diana, she said she cried watching the family being hounded by the tabloids and Prince Harry describing how he and his brother, Prince William, have grown apart.

But as a 65-year-old black woman who grew up in the segregated American South, Roberts said it was the frank discussions around race and racism that resonated with her most.

She said she recognised some of her own experiences in Meghan's admission that she felt she constantly had to prove herself and would never be good enough.

"I've been called an angry black woman, and all of the tropes that are used to demean and dehumanise black women, and so I certainly empathised and sympathised with [the duchess]," she said.

Race was a core theme of the six-part series, but not in the way many had anticipated.

There were no new revelations about Meghan's explosive allegation in her Oprah Winfrey interview that an unnamed member of the royal family had commented on how "dark" their baby's skin would be.

Instead, the couple used the Netflix show to argue that Meghan's biracial heritage was often an underlying factor in what they described as a relentless tabloid campaign against her - and more obviously in the racist abuse she suffered online.

It's a narrative that Roberts recognises. Back in 2018, she helped popularise the hashtag #SussexSquad when her timeline was flooded with racist comments about Meghan after the royal wedding. The trend quickly amassed a following from men and women around the world - predominately people of colour - who wanted to use social media to support the duchess and her family instead of tearing them down.

"One of the things about dog whistles is that if you've not experienced the racism, or if you've not been the victim of it, then you don't recognise it," Roberts said. "What may seem innocent to someone else, you can see, no that's not meant to be innocent at all."

In the series, Prince Harry revealed that one of the first reactions he saw to the announcement of his son Archie's birth was a tweet from Danny Baker, a former BBC presenter, who posted a picture of a couple holding hands with a chimp.

"At the top it said, 'Royal baby leaving the hospital'. That was one of the first things I saw," Prince Harry said. Mr Baker apologised and was later fired.

American tech entrepreneur Christopher Bouzy told the BBC that the couple's children were regularly compared to monkeys in online attacks, with the N-word frequently used against Meghan.

Bouzy featured in the series after his company, Bot Sentinel, found that a small but powerful number of anti-Meghan accounts were responsible for much of hateful content on Twitter.

"This mimics something out of a Russian troll farm," Bouzy said. "I'm not saying there aren't folks out there who just don't like her for whatever reason, but it's my opinion looking at the entire picture of these hate accounts that you can't look at that and come to the conclusion that this is not about race."

RS Locke, an American royal watcher and commentator, claimed the vitriol against Meghan was rooted in misogynoir, a hatred for a person simply because they're black and a woman. The documentary series, she said, captured the dramatic shift in tone of media coverage that she'd witnessed in the years after the royal wedding.

"The UK, much like the broader world, wants to see themselves as accepting and embracing this very diverse, modern couple," she said. But the backlash and racist abuse Meghan says she endured since showed just how far there was to go.

"It's a tug-of-war between how we see ourselves, and who we are."

While many black Americans welcomed Harry and Meghan talking about racism - as well as difficult issues such as the legacy of slavery and colonialism - the duchess has also been criticised for saying she felt blindsided by the realities of living as a black woman.

In the second episode of the series, Meghan grapples with what it was like growing up as a biracial woman in America. The duchess implies she was never discriminated against or "treated like a black woman" until she moved to the UK.

Growing up, she explained, her mother never had "the talk" with her, referring to the frank discussion that many families are forced to have about the realities of racism, discrimination, and the challenges of being a person of colour in America.

For some watching the series, that admission felt like a slap in the face.

"I don't understand that, how was she raised by a whole black woman in America and then she says that her parents never talked to her about being black," one user posted on Twitter. "We're supposed to see her as this black woman but she never related to us."

Others wanted the duchess to clarify if she even identified as black woman before marrying Prince Harry.

Roberts said she felt that statement showed that colourism is still an issue in the United States and that she didn't want to perpetuate that prejudice by blaming the duchess for having different life experiences than she did growing up with a darker complexion.

Many online agreed with her.

"It's Meghan realising being allowed in doesn't necessarily mean acceptance. Diversity is not necessarily inclusion," one user tweeted. "It's a moment most Black people have and it's time to choose is my seat at the table worth the pain and humiliation."

Roberts said watching Harry and Meghan present their version of what happened - and what went wrong - was especially emotional because it felt like a missed opportunity for the royal family.

"It's just tragic that the institution didn't realise what jewels they had in Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan and they didn't say, 'These two people can reach members of the British public and the Commonwealth that the rest of us cannot reach,'" she said.