ITV viewers have criticised Prince Harry after he appeared to row back on his previous remarks about the royal family.
In his interview with Tom Bradby on Sunday (8 January), Prince Harry was asked about the previous claims he and his wife, Meghan, made during their interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2022.
During the interview, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said that unnamed members of the royal family had raised “concerns” over “how dark” Archie’s skin would be.
In Sunday’s ITV interview, Harry seemed to double down on the comments. Bradby asked the royal: “In the Oprah interview, you accuse members of your family of racism…”
“No,” Harry interjected. “The British press said that, right? Did Meghan ever mention, ‘they’re racists’?”
Bradby said: “She said there were troubling comments about Archie’s skin colour. Wouldn’t you describe that as essentially racist?”
Harry replied that he would not describe the incident as racist, “not having lived within that family”.
“The difference between racism and unconscious bias... the two things are different,” he said.
Harry continued: “Once it’s been acknowledged or pointed out to you as an individual, otherwise an institution, that you have unconscious bias, you therefore have an opportunity to learn and grow from that... otherwise, unconscious bias then moves into the category of racism.”
The duke then referred to an incident last year in which Lady Susan Hussey, a member of the Buckingham Palace household, repeatedly asked Black British charity boss Ngozi Fulani where she “really came from”.
“What happened to Ngozi Fulani is a very good example of the environment within the institution,” he added.
According to a University of Edinburgh definition of “unconscious bias”, it is “the tendency of us as humans to act in ways that are prompted by a range of assumptions and biases that we are not aware of”.
Viewers of the ITV interview were left confused and shocked by Harry’s comments.
“Prince Harry you’re WRONG. There’s ZERO difference between racist conscious/unconscious bias & racism. Bias is presence of racism & the actions/words are proof therein,” wrote one person.
“Negatively speculating on the skin tone of an unborn child is not ‘unconscious bias’, unconscious to who? That is someone actively and consciously freaking out about skin colour. Harry knows this but protecting the monarchy is ultimately still his priority,” added another.
“Prince Harry said his family aren’t racist and the conversation about Archie’s skin colour wasn’t racism. He said during the Oprah interview, they never accused the Royal Family of it… the British press did… Tom Bradby looks as baffled as we all feel.”
“Defending Susan Hussey was needless and undermines a lot of what Harry is claiming to stand for lol,” said someone else.
The royal’s ITV appearance was followed by an interview with Anderson Cooper on the CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir Spare, which has been leaked, will be released on 10 January.
In it, the duke revealed that he killed 25 people during military service in Afghanistan, opened up about his last words to his late grandmother and claimed that his brother, Prince William, physically attacked him.
