A white radio producer of The Sean Hannity Show had the audacity to call Prince Harry’s biracial wife, Meghan Markle, “uppity” on air for failing to take part in a summit with Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Prince William, according to a recording of the episode Media Matters for America published on Jan. 14. Even though Markle was in Canada at the time and, as a reporter who covers the royals tweeted, didn’t feel she was needed on the call, Hannity and Lynda McLaughlin apparently interpreted the decision as disrespectful.
Heavens forbid Markle abstain from the very duties she said she would be abstaining from in her and Prince Harry’s decision to step back from their official roles within the royal family. McLaughlin found the decision so disrespectful that she felt the need to use a word that triggers memories of decades of racial violence and lynchings to describe the Duchess of Sussex. Hannity started the analysis of Markle: “What I didn't like in this whole thing—I'll say one thing I didn't like. I didn't like that Meghan didn't even get on the phone as she was in Canada, and she was invited to be a part of that meeting. That I didn't like. That to me is ...” McLaughlin interjected, “Yeah, she's very uppity. She's—she's one of those liberal elitists, you know?”
I understand that having the audacity to decline an invitation from the queen—and Markle was invited to be part of the summit, Hannity said—is quite the faux pas to some, but I would expect that there are things that are more important than impropriety. Being respectful of the histories of others would be one of those things, so let’s hope that McLaughlin was merely broadcasting her own ignorance. Because if she knew what she was saying, that means she intentionally used the language of the racists of yesteryear who violently targeted black people deemed to be “uppity” for doing nothing more than asserting their defiance and opposition to the status quo of disenfranchisement, poverty, and racism. Although lynchings were often thought to be responses to rape claims, statistics published by PBS in connection with its documentary The Murder of Emmett Till show that from 1880 to 1930, most lynching victims were “political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed ‘uppity’ or ‘insolent.’” So given that history, how about we do something radical and refrain from calling black people uppity?
Audio below from Media Matters: