Fox’s TV racism row spills over to Twitter
LAURENCE FOX insisted he “spoke truth to nonsense” after a Question Time audience member dubbed him “a white privileged male”.
The Lewis star, 41, became embroiled in a spat with Rachel Boyle, a lecturer in race ethnicity, during a discussion about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepping back from duties as senior royals.
The lecturer at Edge Hill University on Merseyside was jeered by the audience on Thursday when she dismissed Fox’s claim that Britain is “the most tolerant” country in Europe, and suggested that Meghan had been driven out of the UK by racism.
Fox replied: “It’s so easy to throw the charge of racism and it’s really starting to get boring now.”
When Boyle dismissed him as a “white privileged male” he responded in exasperation: “Oh my
God I can’t help what I am. I was born like this.
“To call me a white privileged male is to be racist.”
Yesterday, the row swapped to social media. The Harrow-educated actor quoted Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech in which Dr King said he wanted a nation where children “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
Fox wrote: “This is the position I took last night and I live by in life. If you can improve on it, I’m all ears.”
The lecturer wrote later on Twitter: “I am appalled at the argument presented to me by this man!
“At no point did I call him a racist. I said his viewpoint is informed by his white privileged position – and he didn’t like it.”