CNN anchor Don Lemon told his colleague Chris Cuomo on Monday during the hand-off between shows that the right was attacking Meghan Markle over her comments during her interview with Oprah Winfrey because they wanted to deny racism.
Discussing the reactions to the joint interview with Markle and her husband Prince Harry, Cuomo said, “Why is the right coming after Meghan Markle? I thought they were about anti-elitism. I thought they were about 1776 again. Why are they coming after her for saying that the Royals didn’t like the shade of the baby? Why doesn’t the kid have any standards? Why would she lie? What does this do for her? What does this do for her husband?”
Lemon said, “They’re not willing to believe the racism or racist part of it. What does it say about the people who are coming after her? And there are a lot of people who are, a number of people out there coming after her. They’re doing it because they want to be relevant.”
Cuomo said, “Why would so many people on the right think it’s important that this brown person was messed up for saying how these white people didn’t like the color of her baby?”
Lemon said, “People don’t want to believe it. Listen, people don’t want to deal with the original sin of this country. People don’t want to deal with racism. There are racism deniers all over. We’re living in a racism denier time in the United States and in the U.K. as well. People don’t want to deal with it.”
He added, “That’s the height of privilege. For you to be able to live in a world where it does not exist or that you can deny it is the height of privilege. Until Harry, sadly, had this very rude awakening when all of a sudden he got a black fiancee and the black wife and black baby. He had a rude awakening. I’m glad he had this epiphany because now he knows. Most people don’t have to deal with it because they don’t. It doesn’t exist to them. If it doesn’t exist, what does that mean? You can absolutely deny it.”
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