Meghan Markle Tells Mariah Carey She Was Not Treated as a ‘Black Woman’ Until She Started Dating Prince Harry

Meghan Markle, Mariah Carey

Samir Hussein/WireImage; ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Meghan Markle; Mariah Carey

Meghan Markle released the second episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes Tuesday, this time welcoming singer Mariah Carey as her guest.

The Duchess of Sussex, 41, chatted with the 53-year-old singer for a conversation titled “The Duality of Diva,” where they spoke about the modern interpretation’s negative connotations of the word “diva” and being biracial.

Mariah touched on how she moved over a dozen times during her youth and grew up without much, struggling to fit in with each new start.

“I didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in. You know, it would be more of the Black area of town or then you could be where my mom chose to live, were the more, the white neighborhoods. And I didn’t fit in anywhere at all,” she began.

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“Yeah, I understand that,” Meghan echoed, adding that she had looked forward to welcoming the pop icon on Archetypes for much more than her music.

Prince Harry

Seth Wenig/AP/Shutterstock Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

“You were so formative for me. Representation matters so much,” she said. “But when you are a woman and you don’t see a woman who looks like you somewhere in a position of power or influence, or even just on the screen — because we know how influential media is — you came onto the scene, I was like ‘Oh, my gosh. Someone kind of looks like me. ‘ “

Alluding to another trailblazing woman in Hollywood, Meghan continued, “I had read this article about Halle Berry, and they were asking her how she felt being treated as a mixed-race woman in the world. And her response was her saying, ‘Well, your experience through the world is how people view you.” So she said because she was darker in color, she was being treated as a Black woman, not as a mixed woman.”

“And I think for us, it’s very different because we’re light-skinned,” she said. “You’re not treated as a Black woman. You’re not treated as a white woman. You sort of fit in between.

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“I mean, if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focused on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband. Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman,” Meghan said, referencing her relationship with Prince Harry. “Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend a meeting at the Taoiseach during their visit to Ireland on July 11, 2018

Pool/Samir Hussein/WireImage Meghan Markle and Prince Harry

In reply, the “Obsessed” singer said that feeling forced to choose between identifying as Black or white was an “interesting thing.”

“As mixed woman, because I always thought it should be okay to say I’m mixed. Like it should be okay to say that. But people want you to choose,” she said, to which Meghan agreed.

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Archetypes shot up Spotify’s charts following the release of the first episode last week, a conversation with Serena Williams titled “The Misconceptions of Ambition, where the friends discussed the double standard society sets for women who chase their dreams and Meghan revealed that a fire broke out in son Archie’s nursery during the Sussex family’s royal tour of Africa in 2019. Two days after it dropped, Archetypes was the number one podcast in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada on Spotify’s international charts.

Meghan and Prince Harry first announced a “multi-year partnership” between Spotify and their production company Archewell Audio in 2020. According to a previously shared press release, Archetypes intends to “investigate the labels that try to hold women back.

Speaking with historians and experts, Meghan will “uncover the origin of these stereotypes and have uncensored conversations with women who know all too well how these typecasts shape narratives.”

Next week’s guest is Mindy Kaling.