The Duke of Sussex has described his wife Meghan as “not visibly black”, as he said the Royal family needed to go through unconscious bias training.
Prince Harry said that the Royal family had treated his wife differently because of her biracial heritage, and accused the media of being racist.
In an interview for Good Morning America on the US television channel ABC, he told interviewer Michael Strahan that the Royal family had missed an opportunity to modernise because of the rift with him and his wife.
He said: “My wife is not visibly black but that’s who she is. The way that they [the media] speak about her, the way that they treat her is incredibly relatable to everybody else of colour.”
He said he “genuinely” believes the monarchy should continue, but that changes should be made.
“I think the same process that I went through regarding my own unconscious bias would be hugely beneficial to them,” he said.
“It’s not racism, but unconscious bias if not confronted, if not acknowledged, if not learned and grown from, that can then move into racism. And the way that I understand it is that we all want to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”
The Duke has previously claimed that a member of the Royal family speculated on the colour of his son Archie’s skin before he was born, but has insisted this week that he never said anyone in his family was a racist.
He said the failure to find a way of keeping the Sussexes in the royal fold represented a “huge missed opportunity” in modernising the monarchy because of what Meghan represented as a biracial woman.
“It’s what she said to me right from the beginning, representation,” he said of his wife. “And I, as a privileged white man, didn’t really understand what she was talking about.”
According to the Duke, the couple wanted to carry on serving the monarchy while splitting their time between Canada and the UK, but that there had been “zero compromise” from his family.
He said: “We were based in Windsor. That was where we genuinely thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives.”
He added that a 12-month transition period for Megxit, which was agreed with Buckingham Palace, fell apart when his own family’s taxpayer-funded security – which was being provided in Canada, where they were living – was withdrawn.
“I was stunned that my family would allow security to be taken away, especially at the most vulnerable point for us,” he said. “And maybe they didn’t understand the concerns that I had. I mean, I listed them. I laid them out.”
Asked whether he thought his family did not understand his security concerns, or did not care, Harry replied: “I think probably a little bit of both.”