Meghan Markle addressed the stereotype of the “angry Black woman” on her “Archetypes” podcast on Tuesday, saying she sometimes has to urge herself to “stop… tiptoeing around and just say what it is that you need.”
In a conversation with comedian Ziwe Fumudoh and actor and producer Issa Rae, the Duchess of Sussex shared her thoughts about the stereotype and explored her guests’ experience with the label.
Rae said that a colleague recently told her she was “very particular,” which she took as a compliment. Meghan agreed that she was also “particular,” and explained what that description meant to her.
“I’m particular!” Meghan said. “I think a high tide raises all ships, right? We’re all going to succeed, so let’s make sure it’s really great, because it’s a shared success for everybody.”
“But I also know that I will find myself cowering and tiptoeing into a room — where, I don’t know if you ever do that, the thing that I find the most embarrassing — when you’re saying a sentence, but the intonation goes up like it’s a question?” she added.
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“And you’re like, ‘Oh my God, stop!’” she continued. “Stop whispering and tiptoeing around and just say what it is that you need. You’re allowed to set a boundary, you’re allowed to be clear. It does not make you demanding, it does not make you difficult ― it makes you clear.”
“My form of that is like question qualifiers, or ‘Maybe we can do something else,’” Rae said. “It’s just always offering a backup, and I have to stop doing that and just be like, ‘No, this is what I want.’ Because it is another way of cowering from your power, and I just ― I’m not interested in doing that.”
Meghan asked Rae, the creator of “Insecure” and “Awkward Black Girl,” whether she felt, as a Black woman, that she was ever “allowed to be angry in certain moments.”
“Absolutely not. Because I can’t lose my cool. I can’t do that ― especially as a Black woman, but also, just even as a public figure now,” Rae said. “Because people are looking for ways to justify their perception of you.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t get angry,” she went on. “That might mean that I will vent my frustrations to someone that I trust, get it out of my system, and then go in fix mode.”
“But I want to be allowed to have that emotion,” she added. “So that’s something I’m still wrestling with.”
The episode marks Meghan’s eighth of the 12-part series, which is a collaboration between the royal’s Archewell Audio offshoot and Spotify.
Last week, the former “Suits” actor spoke with guest Paris Hilton about the “bimbo” label, and opened up about her time on the game show “Deal or No Deal.”
“I ended up quitting the show,” Meghan said. “Like I said, I was thankful for the job, but not for how it made me feel ― which was not smart.”
“I was surrounded by smart women on that stage with me, but that wasn’t the focus of why we were there, and I would end up leaving with this pit in my stomach,” she added. “Knowing that I was so much more than what was being objectified on the stage.”