Meghan Markle, Jussie Smollett, and the Biracial Dilemna

Meghan Markle is biracial, and has proudly made her dual heritage part of her identity. Every follower of the Meghan drama has heard the story of how her (now discarded) father once purchased two Barbie doll families and selected the Black mom and White dad dolls to match Meghan's own family. (Not sure what happened to the White mom and Black dad dolls - maybe passed on to Zendaya a few years later?)

Meg also wrote an essay for Elle about her mixed-race heritage headlined "I'm More Than An Other".

More and more kids today are mixed-race, and it could even be argued that mixed-race is becoming the contemporary standard of beauty. (At the very least, the housewives populating TV commercials in the US all seem to be a mix of Asian, Hispanic, and Black. No more blonde ladies hugging the toilet paper or pouring the kids' Kool-Aid).

But growing up mixed-race is not without challenges. You're never 100% one or the other. Many mixed-race people deal with rejection or fear of rejection from one group or the other, or feel they need to "pick a side."

Which leads to Jussie Smollett.

The hate crime hoax

If you don't follow the US news closely, you may not have heard the story of Jussie Smollett, a biracial man with a Black mother and a Polish Jewish father. Smollett, an acclaimed musician and one of the stars of the Fox series Empire, told Chicago police in late January he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime.

Smollett's description of the crime - that he was attacked at 2am on a sub-freezing Chicago night by two hulking Trump supporters who carried a noose and bleach and recognized him from TV - was always a little suspect, and it now appears that he paid two Nigerian brothers to rehearse and stage the attack.

Jussie primarily identified with his Black heritage: he starred on a mostly-Black TV show with a largely Black audience, played R&B music to a largely Black fan base, and allied himself with Black politicians like Al Sharpton and Corey Booker (plus the biracial Kamala Harris.)

He was also virulently opposed to Donald Trump. If an explanation ever comes out for his thoroughly stupid hate crime hoax, it will probably be that he wanted to "start a conversation about racism under Trump."

The other hoax?

While Jussie Smollett favored his black identity and tried to emphasize his ties to the Black experience, the Duchess of Sussex lives (and seems to have always lived) in a White world. Most of her friends and her past long-term partners are White, she pledged a White sorority at university, and even identified herself as White on at least one cv.

But as an eager striver, Meghan is also willing to use her Black heritage to get her where she wants to go, and often has her team describe any opposition to her position or behavior as racially motivated. (Think it was a tacky move to announce her pregnancy at someone else's wedding? You're a racist!)

At the moment, Meghan is publicly assumed to be 7-8 months pregnant with Prince Harry's child. Many people believe she is not really pregnant. I've always been agnostic about the question, since I don't think it is my place to speculate about the contents of someone else's uterus.

That said, Meghan has certainly encouraged the speculation by her obvious and intermittent padding: on the Australian tour, when she would have been about 12 weeks pregnant, she wore an enormous 6-month belly with some outfits and nothing at all with others. By December, when she would have been about 18 weeks, she wore an 8-month belly to the British Fashion Awards.

She continues to wear towering heels at 7-8 months and bend down to pet dogs or children without obvious discomfort, other behaviors that look strange to women who have actually carried a child.

Is Meghan's pregnancy a hoax? I don't know, although she has certainly carried off hoaxes before, such as her nonexistent trips to Norway with Harry and Italy with the Clooneys.

Even before Harry, Meg always seems to have spent a large percentage of her income on PR, which is why she has so little accumulated wealth such as real estate. And PR people are professionals when it comes to hoaxing.

Desperate for fame

Both Meghan and Jussie seem desperate for fame, perhaps because they confuse attention with admiration and acceptance.

Jussie's hate crime hoax was a bid to solidify his ties to the Black community, boost his profile as an activist against Donald Trump, and perhaps support the presidential campaigns of his friends Harris and Booker, who were supporters of an anti-lynching bill that passed the Senate in December. (The bill is currently stalled in the House of Representatives. The last US death officially attributed to lynching took place in 1981.)

Meghan's hoaxes - her many small lies and, perhaps, one Big Lie - have been designed to solidify her ties to the White Royal Family. After all, if she has a kid with them, she must be a part of them, right?

Both actions were ways to call attention to themselves as authentic representatives of one of their two racial identities.

Jussie wasn't smart enough to carry off his "Big Lie." Is Meghan?