If I saw a lady at a party in what appeared to be Ethiopian garb, I would be eager to hear her story, too. I would be fascinated to learn about her genealogy, since it is a topic which I find of great interest. Ngozi Fulani was born Marlene Headley. And yes, she is English and was born in England. But she had an African name on her name tag. Was it an Ethiopian name? A Nigerian name? There are many nations on the African continent with rich, diverse histories and cultures. I would be curious, too. From The Spectator:
Lady Susan Hussey resigned from the Royal household yesterday after 60 years of loyal service to King and Country. Lady Susan, who is 83, has survived world crises, royal scandals and machinations and the death of her friend Queen Elizabeth, to whom she was a beloved companion and longest serving lady in waiting. But she could not survive a meeting with the activist Ngozi Fulani and the arbitrary ‘rules’ that apparently now govern 21st Century social discourse.
Ms Fulani, the British born head of a London charity, who was attending a function at Buckingham Palace to draw attention to violence against women, says she felt ‘trauma’ and ‘violated’ after Lady Susan asked her which part of Africa she was from. Ms Fulani posted the exchange on Twitter, and despite claiming she had no desire to ‘name and shame’ tweeted Hussey’s initials for the benefit of the press, just in case we journos were being thick.
The walls of the temple then came down on the elderly miscreant. Prince William, who is Lady Susan’s godson, expressed ‘disappointment’ in his long-standing benefactor and elder, and the Palace denounced the incident as ‘unacceptable’. But what is more ‘unacceptable’? To publicly condemn and dismiss an 83-year-old for showing curiosity about someone’s heritage? Or for dispatching a loyal, grey-haired servant with such cruel haste, without even the benefit of a day’s grace? I incline to the latter. But then I am prejudiced, I have known Susan Hussey since I was 18, and if she is a racist, then I am an ornamental fountain.
Her sin, if there was one, was being old. Most pensioners are unfamiliar with the wonders of woke etiquette and its pitfalls. There are new strict rules governing what used to be called ‘making conversation’. In asking Ms Fulani where she ‘really’ came from, Susan Hussey was merely repeating what people like her and my late father used to say.
When my parents met in the early 1960s, the first thing he asked my mother, who is Hungarian, was ‘where are you really from?’ Really. People of Sue Hussey’s generation did not grow up in today’s multi-cultural Britain. This might make them old fashioned, but Ms Fulani, who is a sophisticated media performer and the head of a charity, might have acted with some grace.
I can say with authority, however, that Susan Hussey has never knowingly offended anyone in her life. She upholds a clean tradition of honesty and equity. She possesses the milk of human kindness by the quart. This morning a mutual friend told me she is ‘shattered and heartbroken and will never recover.’ The wasteland that is now her life will be far more devastating than any injury done to Ms Fulani, who far from being the sensitive plant she portrays herself as, is currently taking herself on a tour of every television studio in London.
And now we come to the crux of this tragedy. Susan Hussey has no prejudices at all. She spent much of her life married to a man called Marmaduke, who had one leg. She has never sought publicity or the acclaim of the yelling multitudes. She abhors discrimination and once ticked me off for an article I wrote about Italians on the grounds it was both ‘racist’ and ‘unkind’.
Yet it has been suggested that she should not have been ‘allowed out’ at all, and certainly forbidden social intercourse. Poor Susan is not alone in her plight. This whole business, in fact, draws attention to the twilight world now facing the upper crust British pensioner. There is tremendous pressure now to behave in accordance with a particular bourgeois stereotype, enforced by social media and people like Ms Fulani. Society, and now it seems, the Royal Family, will make you conform, come what may. Otherwise, you will be pilloried and put in the dock, no matter if you are in your last years and your life has been spent in unselfish public service. (Read more.)
From The Conservative Woman:
PEOPLE often ask where I come from. Unlike Ngozi Fulani (née Marlene Headley), the chief executive of the Sistah Space charity who was greatly offended by an ‘interrogation’ on these lines by Lady Susan Hussey, lady in waiting to the late Queen, I take the question as a compliment. It shows my interlocutor’s interest in me as an individual. In my case the question is prompted by a complexion more Latin than Anglo, or a surname more biblical than British. In Dublin, the locals thought me Italian. In fact my mother was second-generation South African, my father first-generation Irish, and both families came from Lithuania. Not that they would have identified as ‘Lithuanian’; they were Jews, originally from Judea. Hence my complexion.
No individual is sui generis. Whether we like it or not, we are defined by our roots. And our multicultural society features roots from everywhere in the world. Indeed we are encouraged to celebrate this diversity. So why do people take offence at the question of their origins? And if Britain is as ‘racist’ as its detractors claim, why do those same critics object to the suggestion that they aren’t truly British?
There is nothing racist about the question ‘Where are you from?’ Even if the questioner were an old-fashioned type who assumed that foreigners are inferior, the charge would be of xenophobia rather than racism. Even that would depend on context.
Take the chant of ‘Yiddoes’ by Spurs fans. On the surface, this appropriation of a derogatory term is ‘racist’. But it’s equally possible to see the opposite. The ‘Yiddoes’ chant shows an acceptance of Jews, with a dash of irony. A fan wouldn’t claim to be a ‘Yiddo’ if he hated Jews, would he?
To acknowledge someone’s otherness, be it national, racial, sexual or whatever, is not in itself hostile, especially given our traditions of humour and banter. Harold Macmillan said there were more Old Estonians than Old Etonians in Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet. Predictably, his witticism was deemed ‘racist’, on the grounds that euphemisms are unsafe.
The obsession with ‘racism’ extends to many an innocent conversational gambit. I once asked a friend whether people say she looks like Beyoncé or Jennifer Lopez. Seeing her bridle, I brought up my apparent resemblance to Rowan Atkinson and – back in the day, when compliments could be taken as such – Dudley Moore. But if you’re Black, any perceived resemblance to another Black person must be ‘racist’.
The Black population is no more homogeneous than the Jewish one. In both cases we have a global diaspora made up of individuals with fascinating family histories. My curiosity in hearing about a fellow Jew’s exotic ancestry extends to everyone’s roots and is quite unrelated to the colour of their skin. (Read more.)
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