this Buckingham Palace is facing charges again. racism. Queen Camila hosts a grand reception to highlight the importance of tackling gender-based violence, racist comments to one of the guests Made by Prince William’s godmother. Susan Hussey, 83, was one of the longest-serving and closest women awaiting Elizabeth II. After the monarch’s death, she continued to hold honorary positions as Camila’s assistant. Among the 350 guests on Tuesday afternoon were two more queens: Matilde from Belgium, Rania from Jordan, Princess Mary from Denmark and Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska. There was also 61-year-old black British Ngozi Fulani, director of a center in London’s Hackney borough, Sistah Space (Sister Space), which offers assistance to women of African and Caribbean descent affected by gender-based violence.
Fulani said that at the reception, Hussein approached him, combed his hair covering the label with his name on his chest, and asked him after reading it. “which part Africa” had arrived. A conversation he reproduced on Twitter, with racism barely concealed behind his seemingly trivial and gentle tone.
– Susan Hussey: Where are you from?
– Me (Ngozi Fulani): Sistah Space.
– No, where are you from?
– We are in Hackney.
– No, where in Africa do you come from?
– I do not know, they did not leave registration documents.
– But you’ll know where it came from. For example, I lived in France for a while. Where are you from
– From here in the UK.
– But what is your nationality?
– I was born here and I’m English.
– I mean, where do you really come from, where do your people come from?.
– “My people”, ma’am? What does it mean?
– Oh, I see it’s going to be pretty hard for me to get you to tell me where you’re from. When did you first come here?
– Woman! I’m a British citizen, my parents came here in the 1950s, then…
– I knew I’d finally find it! You are the Caribbean!
– No, ma’am. I have African heritage, Caribbean descent, and British citizenship.
– Yeah, but then you…
“This is harassment”
After the events spread, Buckingham Palace forced Hussey to apologize and resign as Camila’s aide. The official statement described the comments as “unacceptable and deeply regrettable”. Speaking to the BBC’s ‘Today’ program on Wednesday, Fulani described what happened as “abuse”. Lady Hussey’s advanced age cannot justify, as some are trying to do. “If you invite someone to an anti-domestic abuse event and there are people from different demographics, I don’t see anything about whether I’m British or not. You’re trying to make me feel unwelcome in my field. Even if it’s not physical violence, it’s harassment,” she said.
Although a Buckingham Palace statement said they had contacted Fulani “to invite him to personally discuss all elements of his recent experience, if he wanted to,” the party concerned denied that was the case.
The event coincides with and eclipses William and Kate’s three-day tour of the United States, given the overwhelming American press coverage of the British royal family’s adventures. The events are reminiscent of accusations of institutional racism launched in March 2021 around Meghan Markle’s royal family, which were denied by Prince William himself. Buckingham then announced an internal investigation, about which nothing has been heard since. He now promises to investigate what happened during Camila’s admission.