Like every non-white person in Britain, I’ve been asked “Where are you from?” – and its faintly sinister follow-up, “Where are you really from?” – countless times, says Kohinoor Sahota in The Guardian. So I wasn’t too surprised to hear that charity boss Ngozi Fulani had been given the treatment at a Buckingham Palace event. When I went to a royal reception myself, it was “one of the most uncomfortable” experiences I’ve ever had. Anyone who’s experienced it knows what Lady Hussey was really asking Ms Fulani: “Why are you here? Should you be here?” It’s absurd. Ethnic minorities are “part of the fabric of Britain”, yet the establishment still makes us “feel like guests in our own home”.
Yes, Lady Hussey “should have been more careful with her language”, says Ben Sixsmith in The Critic. But it’s madness that an old woman’s “lack of conversational grace” has become a scandal outranking the war in Ukraine and Qatar hosting the World Cup. Let’s be grown up about it: “being interested in someone’s heritage” is not in itself wrong. Ms Fulani “wears Pan-African colours”; she has a Master’s in African studies; she’s described African culture as “my culture”. If her connection to the place is, as she herself has written, her “lifelong story”, then of course people should ask her about it. “Saying otherwise is like saying that I can wear a Man United shirt and a Man United scarf and take offence if people say, ‘Oh, do you like Man United?’” What the royals should be ashamed of is having abandoned an 83-year-old who’s spent her whole life serving the family just to save face.
🤴🏻😕 As if the “royal race row” wasn’t bad enough, says the Daily Mail, at the start of William and Kate’s US tour this week “the knife was twisted in” when Netflix released the trailer for its drippy Harry and Meghan documentary. It’s just the sort of “grotesque misrepresentation” you’d expect: “Kate glaring”, “Meghan in tears”. After all their sterling work on behalf of the monarchy, this is the last thing the Prince and Princess of Wales need. No wonder the Palace acted swiftly to try and limit the damage.