Trevor Phillips calls Omid Scobie’s allegations about ‘racist royals’ ‘nonsense’ – amid growing backlash over his brutal twist of the knife – and says every family of color discusses a baby’s skin color
A leading equality campaigner today rejected claims that royals discussing Prince Archie’s skin color should be considered racist, stating: ‘There isn’t a family of color anywhere in the world where that conversation isn’t happening.’
Sir Trevor Phillips has said any talk about Archie would have been out of “excitement” about a new baby and whether he would look more like Meghan or Harry.
Sir Trevor revealed that his family had the same conversation about his youngest grandson and believes that discussing skin color in a mixed family should be viewed no differently than discussing the color of a child’s eyes or hair.
The conversation about Archie, if it happened at all, came to a head this week when two alleged “royal racists” were aired on national television in Britain after King Charles and the Princess of Wales were mentioned in the Dutch first edition of Omid Scobie’s Endgame.
Sir Trevor, a former Labor politician and former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was watching his Sunday show live on Sky News last night when he was asked whether he would cover the Endgame scandal.
He said: ‘It’s unlikely we’ll spend much time on that because I’ll be absolutely honest and say I think it’s nonsense. I don’t think there’s a family of color anywhere in the world where that conversation isn’t happening.”
Sir Trevor Phillips has dismissed as ‘nonsense’ the row over the royal family’s alleged skin color of Archie, now featured in Omid Scobie’s book
The prince and Meghan Markle told Oprah that a member of Harry’s family speculated about what color Archie’s skin would be when he was born.
‘I have a grandson who is absolutely beautiful and delightful, I wish I could show you a picture of him, and of course as a family we talk about whether he is going to look more like his mother, who looks like me, or his father , who is of Puerto Rican descent.
“The same way your family, I guess, might talk about what hair color and what eye color. We all have the same hair color. What is different about us is the color of our skin.
‘So it’s a sign of excitement. I suspect I have no idea in what context the conversation took place – and I imagine the conversation did indeed take place – but I suspect someone may have said: I really hope this baby looks more like her than him.”
Omid Scobie last night took the extraordinary step of swearing on live TV on his own life and that of his family that the appointment of two members of the royal family in the Dutch version of Endgame is not a ‘stunt’ to shift more copies of his book .
Scobie, 42, said he was “hurt” by the suggestion and dismissed it as a conspiracy theory by people who want to believe he is “in cahoots” with Meghan Markle. He stated: ‘It couldn’t be further from the truth. ‘.
He also refused to apologize for the racism scandal that has broken out, claiming: ‘I’m just as frustrated as everyone else. The book I wrote, the book I edited, the book I signed, there were no names in it.’
But questions remain over whether he entered the names, as one of the Dutch translators told MailOnline yesterday: ‘The names of the royal family were there in black and white. I didn’t add them’.
Meghan first revealed vague details about the exchange in an interview with US chat show host Oprah Winfrey in 2021. She claimed there had been ‘conversations’ – suggesting there was more than one – in which ‘concerns’ were raised by Harry about how dark Archie’s skin could be. are.
The Dutch version of Endgame, which had to be removed from bookstores
But Harry stated later in the interview that it was one conversation. No further details were given about who was involved. When asked about the allegations in an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby earlier this year, Harry insisted the couple had accused his relatives of nothing more than ‘unconscious bias’. He accused the media of blowing the situation out of proportion.
The racism row was not mentioned in Harry’s autobiography Spare or in the Netflix series the couple made about their departure from royal life.
The late Queen’s statement about the alleged comments, that “recollections may vary”, suggests that only Meghan and Harry considered them racist at the time.
The row resurfaced earlier this year when it emerged that Meghan had written a letter to the king expressing her concerns about racism in the family. Reports indicated that only one person was specifically mentioned about a single comment made.
This week, the Dutch edition of a book by royal biographer Omid Scobie – long seen as a mouthpiece for the Sussexes – appeared to accidentally mention the “royal racists”, citing Meghan’s letter as the source.
They are mentioned separately in different chapters, with the first reference claiming that the letter ‘revealed and confirmed’ the identity of one and the second suggesting that the letter revealed another royal ‘participated in such conversations’.
Mr Scobie denies writing the names in his manuscript, blaming it on a ‘translation error’.
Booker-nominated translator David McKay said it seemed “very plausible” that the confusion had arisen because an earlier manuscript had been accidentally translated, or because changes had been made after the translation that were not copied.
Both Dutch translators who worked on Scobie’s controversial book insisted that the names of two royals at the center of a racism scandal were in the manuscript they received.
Saskia Peeters says that she did not add the names to the Dutch version of the book Endgame. Speaking from her home in Arnhem, she told MailOnline: ‘As a translator, I translate what is in front of me.
‘The names of the royals were on it in black and white. I didn’t add them. I just did what I was paid to do and that was translate the book from English to Dutch.’
The second translator, Nellie Keukelaar-van Rijsbergern, then told The Sun: ‘We are professionals and we have been doing this for years, both of us. It’s not fair.’