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Meghan Markle pens personal essay on race and identity

Meghan Markle has written candidly about her experiences dealing with racism online.

The Suits star made headlines last month when she became the subject of a Kensington Palace press release confirming that she was dating Prince Harry, a novel move for the British royal family, after she and her family were subjected to racist comments on both social media and in the mainstream press.

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Prince Harry condemns 'harassment' of girlfriend

'A line had been crossed', writes Prince Harry about press coverage of his new American girlfriend, actress Meghan Markle.

But, in a personal essay published by Elle UK on Sunday, Markle has revealed that this was by no means her first experience with racially-motivated hatred online.

In a 2000-word essay titled, "I'm More Than An 'Other' ", the US actress, whose mother is African-American and father is caucasian, said she faced the wrath of Twitter trolls when season two of Suits went to air, and her character Rachel Zane's father was cast as an African-American man.

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"I remember the tweets when that first episode of the Zane family aired, they ran the gamut from: 'Why would they make her dad black? She's not black' to 'Ew, she's black? I used to think she was hot'," she wrote. "The latter was blocked and reported."

Reflecting more broadly on race and her identity, Markle told the story of when she was completing a mandatory census in the seventh grade, and did not know which ethnicity box to tick.

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"You could only choose one, but that would be to choose one parent over the other – and one half of myself over the other," she wrote. 

However, Markle said she is now confident in her racial identity.

"I have come to embrace that. To say who I am, to share where I'm from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman," she wrote.

"That when asked to choose my ethnicity in a questionnaire as in my seventh grade class, or these days to check 'Other', I simply say: 'Sorry, world, this is not Lost and I am not one of The Others. I am enough exactly as I am'."

According to a press release from Kensington Palace on November 9, Markle has been dating Prince Harry for "a few months".

The release said the Prince was "worried about Ms Markle's safety", after rumours of their relationship hit the tabloids, particularly making reference to the "racial undertones of comment pieces" about his new girlfriend as well as "the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments".

"He knows commentators will say this is 'the price she has to pay' and that 'this is all part of the game'. He strongly disagrees. This is not a game – it is her life and his," the statement read.

"He has asked for this statement to be issued in the hopes that those in the press who have been driving this story can pause and reflect before any further damage is done."

The couple reportedly met at the Invictus Games for injured military personnel in May this year. 

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