Meghan Markle praised Joe Biden‘s Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in a new op-ed published on Monday.
The Duchess of Sussex contributed her thoughts on the president’s pick to a piece written by Anita Hill, the famed attorney and Brandeis University professor.
“The civil rights history of tomorrow is being written today,” Meghan said in the piece, which was published on URL Media. Judge Jackson’s nomination has opened new ground for women’s representation at the highest level of a judicial system that for too long has tilted against the very community she hails from.”
She continued, “For the millions of young women who will rightfully find inspiration from this moment, let’s remind ourselves that Black achievement is something that exists not just today or yesterday, and not just in moments of celebration, but as a fabric woven into the entire chronicle of the American story.”
Reflecting on the “gravity” of Brown Jackson’s nomination, Hill wrote, “I thought of moments in modern history where Black women of stature and credential entered arenas once thought to be inaccessible. I was recently able to connect with one of these women – Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex – and while her role over the past few years hasn’t been that of a federal judge or elected official, I couldn’t help but see a measure of parallelism given her experience navigating uncharted territory as a Black woman.”
Meghan, 40, has spoken in the past about the importance of acknowledging her biracial identity. (Her mom Doria Ragland is Black, and her dad Thomas Markle is white.)
“While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that,” Markle wrote for Elle in 2015. “To say who I am, to share where I’m from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman. Tha
t when asked to choose my ethnicity in a questionnaire as in my seventh grade class, or these days to check ‘Other’, I simply say: ‘Sorry, world, this is not Lost and I am not one of The Others. I am enough exactly as I am.’ “
During Meghan and Prince Harry‘s roy
al tour of South Africa in 2019, the Duchess of Sussex proudly spoke about her many roles.
“On one personal note, may I just say that while I am here with my husband as a member of the royal family, I want you to know that for me, I am here as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of color, and as your sister,” she said to cheers from the crowd.
“I am here with you, and I am here for you,” she continued.
On Saturday, Meghan and Prince Harry appeared on stage at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday to accept the President’s Award in recognition of special achievement and distinguished public service.
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Through the couple’s Archewell Foundation, which they launched in 2020, Harry and Meghan have supported efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and focused their attention on the Black Lives Matter movement and fighting for racial justice.
During the couple’s speech, Harry thanked the Black community for “welcoming me so warmly,” while Meghan, who brought her mother to the awards show, said she “couldn’t be prouder.”