Who is Sir Trevor Phillips? Human rights campaigner claims Meghan Markle had to 'learn to be Black'
LONDON, ENGLAND: In a recent interview, a race and equity campaigner made controversial remarks against the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle stating she had to "learn to be Black" following her marriage to Prince Harry. As per Sir Trevor Phillips, a race and equality campaigner, "she made a mess of it."
"Race was never really a part of her background" as she was raised in the affluent Black community of Park View, Windsor Hills in Los Angeles, Phillips said. Phillips claimed that after becoming a princess, Meghan refused to "accept advice and squandered" the opportunity to demonstrate Britain's diversity.
Who is Sir Trevor Phillips?
The broadcaster and former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission made the series of claims during a debate on TalkTV's 'Piers Morgan: Uncensored.' "I think people mistake who Meghan Markle is, she herself said that until she became this princess she never regarded herself particularly as Black and that's understandable. She grew up in Los Angeles in the most wealthy Black enclave anywhere in the United States - Park View, Windsor Hills... she went to a private Roman Catholic school and in a sense race was never really a part of her background."
It comes after the Duchess revealed to guest Mariah Carey on her 'Archetypes' podcast on Spotify last year that she identifies as a person of mixed race. "I mean, if there's any time in my life that it's been more focused on my race, it's only once I started dating my husband," she said. "Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman. Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted."
Sir Trevor Phillips as an award-winning broadcaster
Great British speakers cite Sir Trevor Phillips as an award-winning broadcaster, writer, and former politician. Phillips, a former head of current affairs at ITV station LWT won 'Royal Television Society' journalism awards in 1988 and 1993, before landing the RTS documentary series award for Windrush in 1998. In 2020, he was shortlisted in the British Journalism Awards for Comment Writer of the Year. The founding chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Phillips previously chaired the Commission for Racial Equality and was the elected chair of the London Assembly as per Sky News, where he was reported to have hosted its weekly politics show in 2021.
Trevor regularly wrote for biggest newspapers
The Great British Speaker mentions that he has been involved in some of the most talked-about programs on television, including 'Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?' (2017) and 'Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True' (2015). He is also said to regularly write for the UK’s biggest newspapers, including The Times, The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Sunday Times, and has written about race, diversity, politics, mental illness, and grief – Trevor lost his daughter, Sushila Phillips, a freelance journalist in 2021 aged 36 from anorexia.
'I think she made a bit of a mess of it'
On his appearance on Piers Morgan, Sir Trevor further stated, "The point I really want to make about Meghan Markle is that she had to learn how to be Black on the job, as it were, and I think she made a bit of a mess of it, she didn't take advice, and that in some sense is why I think they squandered the opportunity to demonstrate something important about this country." He added, "We have the largest, uniquely mixed race population anywhere in the developed world that has come about through romance rather than coercion and they could have been standard bearers for that."
Who did she confront?
Sir Trevor and TalkTV commentator Paula Rhone-Adrien got into a spat over whether the Duchess had to directly tackle racism in the UK. "We know that she was having to confront racists," Rhone-Adrien said, adding, "There are people in prison now because of the threats they made to her life." "Who did she confront? Tell me the name of one person that she confronted," Sir Trevor said.