Honestly, it’s wild how much people still debate this. You’d think by 2026 we’d have moved past the need to "box" everyone, but when it comes to the Duchess of Sussex, the question of identity is always simmering just under the surface. It’s not just about curiosity anymore. It’s become a whole cultural flashpoint that touches on history, Hollywood, and the British monarchy.
So, let's get into it. What is the race of Meghan Markle?
Basically, she’s biracial. She has been very clear about this for years, long before she ever met Prince Harry. Her mom, Doria Ragland, is African American. Her dad, Thomas Markle Sr., is Caucasian, with a mix of Dutch, English, and Irish roots. Meghan herself has famously described her background in the most straightforward way possible: "My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white."
Simple, right? Not really. For Meghan, growing up in Los Angeles with that heritage meant navigating a world that didn't always know where to put her.
The "Ethnic Chameleon" Struggle in Hollywood
Before she was a Duchess, Meghan was a working actress trying to pay the bills. If you've ever looked at her early IMDb credits, you'll see she was everywhere, but the road wasn't exactly smooth. She’s talked quite a bit about being "ethnically ambiguous."
Basically, she was a casting director’s puzzle.
In her own words, she wasn’t "black enough" for the Black roles and she wasn't "white enough" for the white ones. She called herself an "ethnic chameleon" because she could be cast as anything from Latina to Mediterranean depending on what she wore or how she did her hair. While that sounds like a superpower, it actually made it incredibly hard to book consistent work.
The breakthrough came with Suits. The producers weren't looking for a specific race for the character of Rachel Zane. They just wanted the right person. By casting Meghan, they didn't just give her a job; they let her exist as a person without her race being the only thing the audience saw.
Why the "Box" Mattered in 7th Grade
There’s this story she tells about a mandatory census in her seventh-grade English class. You probably remember those forms—the ones where you have to check a box for your ethnicity. She was stuck. There were boxes for "White," "Black," "Hispanic," and "Asian."
There wasn't a box for "Both."
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Her teacher told her to just check "Caucasian" because that’s how she "looked." Meghan couldn't do it. She said she imagined the "pit-in-her-belly sadness" her mom would feel if she found out Meghan had basically denied half of her identity. So, she left it blank. That moment kinda defines how she’s handled her identity ever since—refusing to choose one side of her family over the other just to make things easier for everyone else.
The Royal Family and the "Post-Racial" Myth
When Meghan married Prince Harry in 2018, the world went into a bit of a frenzy. A lot of people—especially in the UK—wanted to use her as proof that society had suddenly become "post-racial." They saw a woman of color entering the ultimate bastion of whiteness and thought, "Cool, we fixed racism!"
Except, that’s not really how it works.
Historians like Robert Lacey have pointed out that Meghan might not even be the first mixed-race royal. There’s a long-running theory that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, had African ancestry. But even if that’s true, the reaction to Meghan was different because she owned her identity. She didn't try to hide it or "pass."
The media coverage that followed was, frankly, pretty brutal. Researchers have analyzed thousands of articles comparing the treatment of Meghan to her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. While Kate was often framed as the "dutiful" English rose, Meghan was frequently hit with coded language. Phrases like "Straight Outta Compton" or describing her as "exotic" weren't accidents. They were markers used to remind people that she was "different."
The Statistics of Being Mixed Today
It’s worth looking at the bigger picture here. In the UK, the "Mixed" category is one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups. According to the 2021 Census, about 1.7 million people in England and Wales identify as mixed-race. That’s roughly 3% of the population.
In the United States, that number is even higher. The 2020 Census showed a massive 276% increase in people identifying as "Multiracial" compared to the decade before.
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Meghan represents a massive, growing demographic of people who don't fit into a single bucket. When people ask about her race, they’re often really asking how she fits into a traditional hierarchy. The answer is that she doesn't, and that’s exactly why her presence in the public eye causes so much conversation.
Identity Beyond the Label
One thing Meghan has been adamant about is that her identity isn't just a box on a form. It's her life. In a 2015 essay for Elle, she wrote about how she’d come to embrace the "grey area" of her heritage.
"To say who I am, to share where I'm from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman."
She doesn't see being biracial as being "half" of anything. She sees it as being a whole person who happens to have a diverse history. It’s a nuance that often gets lost in the 24-hour news cycle or on social media threads where people try to argue about whether she’s "Black enough" to talk about certain issues.
Honestly, the reality is that identity is personal. While the world wants to define her by her skin color or her parents, she’s spent the last decade trying to define herself by her work, her activism, and her family.
How to Understand This Moving Forward
If you're trying to wrap your head around why this matters, think of it this way: Meghan Markle's race isn't a "fact" to be solved like a math problem. It’s a lived experience.
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- Acknowledge the complexity: Don't try to simplify someone's heritage into a single word if they use two.
- Listen to self-identification: The most accurate way to describe someone's race is the way they describe themselves. For Meghan, that’s "biracial" or "mixed-race."
- Look at the context: Recognize that how she is treated is often tied to people's perceptions of her race, regardless of how she identifies.
- Educate on history: Understanding things like the "one-drop rule" in the US helps explain why American and British media sometimes view her through different lenses.
Next time you see a headline debating her background, remember that she’s already given the answer. She’s proud of her mom, she’s proud of her dad, and she’s done trying to check just one box.