Laura Ingraham called out race-obsessed Americans Monday night on “The Ingraham Angle,” saying the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should be celebrated for what it is — the announced union of two people who are in love.
“Just moments after the engagement was announced, social media was awash in racial overtones,” Ingraham said in her opening monologue. “And this was all because Meghan Markle’s father is white, and her mother is black. So suddenly, tweets and Facebook posts were harping on her racial identity.”
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Ingraham went on to read several tweets from Monday.
The first read: “Some folks in England are about to lose their minds. @meghanmarkle is #biracial (black mom), she’s older than he is, and she an #American actress. #BlackRoyalty.
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Another read: “Good time to remind everyone that Meghan Markle is black. Since I know y’all gonna try and whitewash the sh** outta her.”
“I know we’re fascinated by royalty, but must we transfer our racial hang-ups onto this young, happy couple? Can’t we just celebrate their engagement and leave it at that?” Ingraham asked.
The engagement of Markle and Prince Harry, the youngest son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, was not entirely unexpected, as it had been rumored for weeks.
“I know we’re fascinated by royalty, but must we transfer our racial hang-ups onto this young, happy couple?” Ingraham asked.
But it shined a spotlight on Markle, 36-year-old American television actress who will marry the fifth in line to the British throne.
Markle’s race, said Ingraham, is “not the most interesting part of this story” — pointing out that Harry had to get special permission from Queen Elizabeth, his grandmother, to marry Markle because she is a divorcee and also because she was raised Catholic.
Markle grew up in Los Angeles, California, and went to Immaculate Heart High School, an all-girls Catholic school in the city.
She graduated in 2003 from Northwestern University in Chicago, and worked as a model, calligrapher and actress, most recently on the USA Network show “Suits.”
Markle left the show in April and recently said she would give up acting after she marries Harry.
Related: Meghan Markle: Who Is She, Really?
The wedding will not be as groundbreaking as some on social media seem to think, said Ingraham, pointing out that Markle will not be the first European royal who is black.
“That would be the beautiful Princess Angela of Liechtenstein, who married Prince Maximillian back in 2000,” she said.
But race, and how Markle “identifies,” she said, shouldn’t be the focus.
“We’ve had a biracial president and we’re about to have a biracial member of the English royal family. But not every moment has to be about race.”
One of Ingraham’s guests, Horace Cooper, co-chair of Project 21, said the tweets Ingraham read weren’t just bad but were “outrageous,” and said Markle’s race is “not relevant.”
“If this were 1955 and I saw some of these kinds of comments, I’d go, ‘Which segregationist racist said this today?'” he said.
Cooper asked why liberals aren’t standing up to the “weird fixation” on Markle’s race.
“I don’t hear anyone on the Left saying, ‘Stop that, don’t do that’ … Why aren’t we seeing condemnations?” he said.
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