We must confront racism, says Sunak after royal row
SENIOR AIDE TO QUEEN CONSORT QUITS OVER BIAS ALLEGATION
PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak said last Thursday (1) that racism must be confronted “whenever we see it”, as he touched on his own experiences dealing with racial discrimination and bigotry.
His comments come the day after a fresh racism row hit the royal household, with a senior staff member resigning for repeatedly asking a black British charity campaigner where she was “really” from.
Sunak, the UK’s first Asian prime minister, said “it wouldn’t be right for me to comment” on the specifics of the scandal, but noted that he had “experienced racism in my life”.
“But what I’m pleased to say is that some of the things that I experienced when I was a kid and a young person, I don’t think would happen today,” he told Sky News.
The 42-year-old Conservative leader hailed the country’s “incredible progress in tackling racism”, while adding “the job is never done”.
“And that’s why whenever we see it, we must confront it. And it’s right that we continually learn the lessons and move to a better future,” Sunak said.
Susan Hussey, 83, a godmother to Prince William, used racially charged language in a conversation with a black British woman at a Buckingham Palace reception last Tuesday (29).
The King moved rapidly to evict Hussey from her role as an aide to Queen Consort Camilla, after the hurtful exchange was revealed on Twitter by Ngozi Fulani, who had the interaction with her.
When Hussey started to quiz her about her origins, the UK-born Fulani said she tried to give the 83-year-old courtier the benefit of the doubt.
“But it soon dawned on me very quickly that this was nothing to do with her capacity to understand,” the charity campaigner, who works with survivors of domestic abuse, told BBC radio last Thursday (1).
Hussey repeatedly asked Fulani where she was “really” from, refusing to accept her explanation that she was British.
“But this is her trying to make me really denounce my British citizenship,” Fulani said, as many other Britons of colour shared similarly demeaning experiences on social and traditional media.
Labour MP Diane Abbott, the first black woman to sit in the House of Commons when she was elected in the 1980s, said it was “really shocking” that a black Briton’s identity could be interrogated in this way.
But she told Times Radio that Buckingham Palace had made “progress” on race issues in the past 10 years.
Back then, “they would have said she (Fulani) was oversensitive and just dismissed it”, said Abbott.
The palace appears to have taken lessons on board particularly since last year, when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, accused an unidentified royal of racism with regard to their unborn baby. Then, William retorted: “We are very much not a racist family.” But the family said the matter would be dealt with “privately”.
The royal household has also begun publishing data on the ethnic breakdown of its staff, admitting it has more to do to ensure due representation.
When Meghan entered the family, the lady-in-waiting was assigned to educate her in royal protocol, a role that Hussey also served for William and Harry’s mother Diana.
Meghan rejected the offer, according to one biographer.
“The stifled horse laugh you can hear emanating from California is the noise of a duchess trying not to guffaw ‘I told you so’,” commentator Trevor Phillips – a former head of the Commission for Racial Equality – wrote in the Times.
Phillips added: “A mindset that colour codes British identity is not just distasteful and anachronistic, it is unambiguously racist.”
This week, Harry and Meghan were due to attend an awards gala in New York held by the human rights foundation of Kennedy’s brother Robert.