If anyone is unclear about the damage racism causes, one had only to watch media mogul Oprah Winfrey’s sad and sickening interview with Meghan Markle, the duchess of Sussex, and her husband, Prince Harry.

The 39-year-old pregnant Ms. Markle, a strong and independent woman brought up by her Black mother and white father in California, told without flinching how the isolation and lack of support from the British royal family after her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry drove her to thoughts of suicide.

What so many believed to be a fairy-tale life took her to the sunken place, where, like a butterfly captured in a jar, she was slowly being suffocated with the continual unchecked criticism and abuse from racist British media.

What made it even more cruel is that when Ms. Markle, pregnant with the couple’s son, Archie, sought help from senior royals and the royal institution, she was rebuffed by the very people who have the power and position to aid and protect her.

Further, her new family showed their racist colors by expressing their “concerns” to Prince Harry about how dark the baby’s complexion would be and what it “would mean and look like” for the royal family, according to Ms. Markle.

Ms. Winfrey was astonished.

Even before Archie was born, the royal institution denied the couple’s baby a royal title and, with it, his eligibility for protection. Her husband also was denied protection, even as death threats continued to pour in.

No one can survive such a perpetual volume of racism and abuse. We applaud Prince Harry for taking the drastic, but heroic action of leaving Britain with his wife and child and stepping down as a senior royal to protect their lives, health and well-being.

We also applaud Tyler Perry, an unsung hero in this saga, for giving the couple a temporary home and providing security people in California for several months last year before they got on their feet.

Here in Virginia, we know too well that the British Empire was built on colonialism and white supremacy. The British brought that evil to Virginia and the American shores in 1619 in the form of enslavement of Africans and domination of indigenous people. And the story was the same wherever the British colonized — from Africa and the Caribbean to India and Hong Kong.

The lesson revealed by the couple’s interview is that money and title can’t shield people from racism and the crushing notions of white supremacy. Racism is a health crisis that can drive even a strong woman like Ms. Markle to possible suicide.

Warped by racism, the royal family couldn’t embrace the biracial wife and baby of the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II. They refused to use their power and influence to help the couple when Ms. Markle was suffering from severe mental health issues. Their image was more important than her life.

We find it even more jarring — and hypocritical — because Prince Harry was joined in May 2016 by his brother and sister-in-law, Prince William and Kate, in launching an organization to promote mental health awareness. The organization, Heads Together, was started “to ensure that personnel feel comfortable with their everyday mental well being, feel able to support their friends and families through difficult times, and that stigma no longer prevents people getting the help they need.”

Ms. Markle didn’t get that support in Britain from the royal family. We hope she, Prince Harry, Archie and their daughter, whose birth is expected this summer, will find the support they need and the love they deserve in California.