The British royal family is trying hard to escape its reputation for racism and anti-Blackness. However, efforts to paint one royal ancestor as a great American abolitionist are being mocked across social media, spawning the hilariously sarcastic hashtag #KarriettTubman.

The British royal family has been inundated with bad press related to its history and alleged current practices of racism. After new revelations about his family’s long history of involvement in the slave trade, King Charles III is going further than any other British monarch in acknowledging the royals’ racist past. Tensions persist between Charles and his son, Prince Harry, and daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle, all due to the alleged racist treatment of Markle.

With this backdrop, many people found it interesting that The Daily Mail ⁠— a newspaper that has been hostile toward Harry and Meghan in the past ⁠— highlighted the anti-racist family history of Charles’ other daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton. The April 14 article by Claudia Joseph profiles Harriet Martineau, Kate Middleton’s “great-great-great-great-great-aunt,” a British abolitionist who advocated for the end of slavery in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although Martineau is not well known in modern times, the article calls her the “greatest American abolitionist” and gives her indirect credit for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

If the article intended to paint a better and less racist image of the royals, it appears to have backfired, as Twitter users roasted the writer and the royals for their attempts at better PR.

“According to the White woman who wrote the story about Kate’s abolitionist ancestor this ancestor was ‘the greatest American abolitionist,’” wrote one Twitter user. “NOT Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips but Kates aunt,” she continued in the post, which included the satirical hashtag #KarriettTubman.

“You see it was #KarriettTubman who braved the Underground Railroad to save hundreds of runaway slaves,” the Phenomenally Black account joked.

 

Several Twitter users brought in instances of Kate’s racial baggage, such as the disastrous trip she and Prince William took to the Caribbean in 2022.

The roasting continued for days, with various memes and hashtags such as #KKKhate emerging.

“The collective dragging under #KarriettTubman has me in shambles,” someone tweeted, adding “Black Twitter never misses.”

 

In short, if The Daily Mail or other royal family supporters thought this article would help the monarchy’s public image with Black people in or outside of the U.K., they were sorely mistaken. The piece did, however, bring days of entertainment to Black Twitter.

Kate Middleton