WATCH: Don Lemon Says ‘Shocking’ Meghan Markle Took So Long to ‘Understand What It’s Like to Be a Black Woman’

CNN anchor Don Lemon praised Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle for discussing colorism on her podcast — but expressed “shock” that she is just now “understanding what it’s like to be a Black woman in America.”

On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, co-anchor Brianna Keilar asked Lemon to weigh in on an exchange — from Markle’s Archetypes podcast — in which she and guest Mariah Carey discussed their experiences as mixed-race women with lighter skin.

In particular, Keilar asked Lemon about a clip in which Markle told Carey that “if there’s any time in my life that it’s been more focus on my race, it’s only once I started dating my husband.”

“Then I started to understand what it was like to be treated like a Black woman. Because up until then, I had been treated like a mixed woman. And things really shifted.”

Lemon lauded both women for having the discussion, and expressed surprise that it took Markle until her thirties to understand the experience she described:

Yeah, well, look, there are a couple of things at work here. There’s colorism, which I talk about. There’s colorism in the Black community, but there’s also — this is also for people —

In some ways, she’s saying that she had privilege and so therefore it didn’t apply to her because it never happened to her. Right? She was a mixed woman. People didn’t really know how to react to her. They didn’t know if she was Black or White, but she didn’t get the full Black treatment because people weren’t sure that she was, you know, Black.

I think most African-Americans probably looked at her and said, oh, I know that’s a Black woman, but I think the larger culture may not have realized that.

But what she essentially, what she is coming from is a place of privilege where she did not have to deal with racism until she married a White man. And she’s got all this criticism and all this attention. And suddenly she understood or understands what it’s like to be part of a group of people, especially women in this country or in Europe, who are discriminated against. So I think it was it was eye-opening for her. It’s certainly real.

And you know, it’s interesting, Mariah Carey has a very similar experience. I remember when Mariah Carey came about in the 90s, people didn’t know what to do with her. In their podcast, she talks about even people not knowing how to do her hair. And her the people who were in charge of her and trying to establish her as an artist didn’t really know how to market her. Do they market her as a Black woman? Do they market her as a mixed woman? Do they or as a White woman? They didn’t really know how to do it.

So I think it’s an I actually I think it’s an eye-opening podcast and I commend Meghan Markle for going there, even though it is a bit shocking that at 30-some years of age, she is just understanding what it’s like to be a Black woman in America. It’s a bit surprising to me.

Watch above via CNN.