How racist is Britain?

NOT LONG ago, any report on the state of race relations in Britain would have featured a large photograph of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. According to a long line of commentators, their marriage in 2018 symbolised a country at ease with itself. “A reverend quoting Martin Luther King, a swaying black gospel choir, and a mixed-race duchess,” ran a typical headline, on Mail Online: “the day the monarchy embraced multicultural Britain’s future”.

In their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the couple offer a rather different commentary on race. They attributed their decision to quit Britain for America to the “bigoted” tabloid press and said that a member of the royal family had queried how dark their baby’s skin would be.