The Haunted House on Race Row
The Haunted House on Race Row
The abuse of Ngozi Fulani and the resignation of Lady Susan Hussey is being framed in a very familiar way by a press practised in manufacturing excuses.
Previously: An incitement to get cross
Coverage of the results of the 2021 ONS Census of England and Wales features more dog whistles than a chaotic day at Crufts.
What is a “race row”? It’s a phrase that newspapers — particularly British ones — are enormously keen on. When you spot it in a headline or a lede, it’s almost always in connection to a story where someone has been subjected to racism and a number of other people are noisily dismissing that act and making excuses on the racist’s behalf.
To many in the British media, calling someone racist is worse than being racist; it’s awfully impolite, “ad hominem”, not how the game is played, and an opportunity to focus attention on the person who was targeted in the first place.
The Daily Mail’s front page following the resignation of Lady Susan Hussey from her honorary role at Buckingham Palace is a case study of this process. At the top of the page — in white text on a purple background — a headline screams:
Inside story of how 60 years of loyal service was ended in 5 hours
It’s illustrated with an image of the late-Queen Elizabeth II laughing with Hussey. The combination of headline and photo reinforces a sense that the lady-in-waiting is the victim here, that 60 years of “service” should at least earn her one public barracking of a guest about their heritage.
The author of that “inside story” is Richard Kay, the Mail’s editor-at-large who never misses an opportunity to mention how frightfully close he was to Princess Diana, and his article occupies a double-page spread on pages 6 and 7 of the print edition. Under the headline…
… Kay pens a sycophantic portrait of Hussey heavy with the implication that the Queen would not have pushed her out:
When they were together there was always a lot of laughter. It was a jolly, infectious humour, often wry but never cruel, and based on shared experiences going back decades. And no one spanned the Queen’s life quite like her lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey…
Having told his readers that Hussey was “unflappable, loyal and discreet” — there’s a loaded word if ever there was one — Kay excuses her interrogation of Ngozi Fulani:
… however unfortunate her comments, her sudden resignation yesterday for repeatedly asking a black British charity boss where she originally came from has stunned her closest friends and reopened the toxic debate about alleged racism within the Royal Household.
The remarks were not “unfortunate” — Hussey did not misspeak, she asked the same question multiple times — nor was she “making people feel welcome”, as an anonymous friend quoted by Kay claims. He mentions Fulani by name just once in his article but the Duchess of Sussex is mentioned multiple times; despite having no involvement with Hussey’s comments nor the Palace’s reaction to them, it still has to be Meghan (and Harry)’s fault:
The speed of the announcement revealed the Palace’s extreme sensitivity over the issue just days before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix documentary, which is widely expected to rekindle the couple’s inflammatory accusations that a member of the Royal Family had made a remark they construed as racist by speculating what their son Archie would look like when he was born.
Another example of racist behaviour from a member of the royal household could suggest that Meghan and Harry’s words might have some truth to them but that would require a writer not firmly resident in the monarchy’s lower intestines; unfortunately, Kay pens all of his pieces while wearing a head torch.
He bends over backwards to excuse Hussey’s remarks (“She might initially have assumed — wrongly — that she was a visitor from overseas.”) and scrabbles around for examples of her “reassuring presence” over the decades:
When the Queen needed a £1 coin for a Big Issue seller, Lady Susan provided it. And when a tube of Clarins anti-ageing cream caught the Queen’s eye in a duty-free shop during a stopover at Singapore airport, it was her trusty lady-in-waiting who purchased it. When the lights went out in a power cut as the Queen dressed for a reception in Jamaica, Lady Susan came dashing in with candles to ensure the royal tiara could be put on correctly.
The banality of this all would be laughable were it not for Kay trying to wave away an undeniably racist exchange by quoting “a former close aide to the Queen” saying:
Where was anyone standing up saying, “Wait a moment, this is a woman who has travelled to every corner of the planet and met people from every ethnic background. Is it really likely that she would be deliberately, provocatively racist?” I don’t think so.
Of course! After all, Prince Philip’s world travelling famously made him one of the world’s foremost anti-racists as well as a respected critic of wiring that looked “as if it was put in by an Indian”. And how could a woman employed by the royal family since 1960 — 8 years before the Queen ensured she was exempt from new equality laws — possibly hold racist views and express them in conversation?
Strip Kay’s argument back to its essence and it’s this: Lady Hussey is 83, was awfully nice to the Queen, is the victim in all this, and anyway, Meghan’s the one who’s really to blame, isn’t she?
The Mail’s front page splash, bylined to its royal correspondent Rebecca English with “additional reporting” by reporter Alice Wright (no relation), takes an unsurprisingly similar line. Under the headline…
… English writes:
Buckingham Palace was engulfed in a toxic race row last night. It forced Lady Susan Hussey, the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, to resign after being accused of racially insulting a black guest.
The way the news report is structured is telling. As well as Fulani’s account of the conversation there were several witnesses and English’s own story says “Lady Susan immediately acknowledged the issue” yet she still frames the situation as one of an “accusation”. The fact that Hussey also touched Fulani’s hair is buried deep in the story — on page 4 of the print edition — and the front page copy makes the Palace the subject of the reporting rather than the woman who was “racially insulted”.
That phrase “racially insulted” is, in itself, a weasel wording. Given the facts of the story a more honest report might begin:
Ngozi Fulani, a guest at a Buckingham Palace reception yesterday, was subjected to racist questioning by Lady Susan Hussey, the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, who has now resigned.
English’s opening paragraph is 31 words long. My rewrite comes in at 27 words. The benefit of the change is that it focuses on the person who suffered the abuse rather than the one who delivered it or the institution that is embarrassed by it.
But the Mail’s intentions towards Ngozi Fulani are made abundantly clear by a box out on page 5 of the print edition (Domestic violence campaigner who backed Meghan in Palace race row) in which reporter David Wilkes writes:
Miss Fulani previously accused the Royal Family of domestic violence against the Duchess of Sussex. She made the claim in March 2021 when Piers Morgan resigned from Good Morning Britain after saying he did not believe Meghan’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey about her requests for mental health treatment being refused by palace officials.
Miss Fulani, who has also worked as a specialist advocate for domestic violence victims, tweeted: ‘Our charity supports black women domestic violence survivors. I can’t stay silent about this.
‘I admire Meghan for speaking out. According to clear definition, it seems Meghan is a survivor of domestic violence from her in-laws.’
She also suggested in an interview with The Guardian in 2020 that black women did not report their abusers because they did ‘not want to risk their abusers being hurt or murdered’.
Wilke’s “clips job” — finding and putting together quotes from previous press interviews with her tweets — is not simply an exercise in giving readers more background on the story. His editors know exactly how readers will respond to the news that she defended the Duchess of Sussex. They also know exactly what they’re signalling to readers by writing:
… [Fulani] saw an African dance group, which she described as “a pivotal moment, because it was a connection with Africa and put me in touch with Africans from the continent”.
She added: “My connection with Africa became my lifelong story. It’s identity, because ours was robbed from us. Over time, black people have been forced to try and be something they are not.”
She began teaching African dance and, while running a dance school in Hackney, became alarmed by the prevalence of domestic abuse among African and Caribbean-heritage women.
While studying for an MA in African studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, she said there were five black people in her class but it did not feel “authentic” and at times she found it “traumatic”.
The Mail is not quoting Fulani’s words in good faith; this is the newspaper equivalent of repeating someone’s words back to them in a disdainful voice or rolling your eyes while doing it. The best-rated comments beneath the online version of Wilke’s profile show the audience heard this loud and clear:
Patch, Norfolk, United Kingdom, 15 hours ago
Im fed up with hearing about these peopleSydlands, Derby, United Kingdom, 18 hours ago
Check out her Tweets. She's been waiting for this opportunity for a while. She knew it would come. And she was there to report and milk it.Charlie57, Warrington, United Kingdom, 18 hours ago
A troublemaker getting her five minutes of fame and destroying an old lady’s life. Well done her.
The view expressed in the last comment there has been loudly touted around the broadcast media by Petronella Wyatt, who appeared on PM last night to defend Hussey and whose tweets on the matter are reproduced in the Mail under the headline Friend: This will ruin aide’s life:
[She] defended ‘decent’ Lady Susan Hussey last night and voice her concerns that the race row would “ruin her life”.
… “She often asked my mother where she was from because she had a central European accent. I am sometimes mistaken for non-British because of my colouring. I’m never offended. Poor Susan Hussey is 83 and this must be the first time she has ever offended anyone. She is very kind and considerate and I feel sorry for her. Her main sin appears to be friendly curiosity…”
Inevitably, Wyatt has turned her comments into a fee with a Spectator piece (In defence of Lady Susan Hussey):
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.
Ah, yes, you see not being racist is terribly non-U. I’m sure Nancy Mitford, Lady Moseley, and dear darling Unity would agree.
The Times’ front page story also frames it as a debate (William’s godmother quits over racism row). Fulani’s account of the conversation is caveated (“she says”) and the corroboration given by witnesses is not mentioned in the front page report which has three names on the byline (Tom Ball, Valentine Low and Ali Mitib).
Ball and Low — possible name for an Aldi-brand Farrow & Ball knockoff — do quote the words of Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, who was standing with Fulani, in their story inside the paper…
[She] said that they were made to feel like “gatecrashers” and described Hussey’s line of questioning as “racist”.
“This wasn’t just a few seconds, it was concerted over several minutes, and the answers Ngozi gave time and time again were not satisfactory to Lady Susan, so it did feel like an interrogation.”
… but offer the same mitigations as Kay did in the Mail:
There were few within the royal household more highly regarded or better loved than Lady Susan Hussey…
… Last night, a source who knows Hussey very well said she was “the most caring and wonderful person.” The source added: “She would never intentionally hurt or insult someone.”
In The Times 2, Sir Trevor Phillips opens an otherwise reasonably balanced piece about the incident by sneering:
The stifled horse laugh you can hear emanating from California is the noise of a duchess trying not to guffaw “I told you so”. It would be uncharacteristic of Meghan and Harry to exploit the humiliation of an out-of-touch octogenarian, so no doubt the Sussexes will be as dignified as ever. It may take ages — hours even — before a new bonus podcast delicately entitled “My Truth About Prejudice at the Palace” sidles its way to the top of the Spotify charts.
Executives at Netflix’s San Francisco HQ will be breaking out Sonoma’s sparkling best; at last, a Right Royal Villain to help promote Harry’s documentaries…
It’s anti-fan fiction again, Phillips’ daydream about what he thinks the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will do. The headline asks “is this the story that proves Meghan right?” but the copy immediately pushes that aside.
However, there is a paragraph from Phillips’ piece that needs quoting to the rest of the print media though:
… Hussey’s age may be prayed in to explain her conduct. I don’t buy it. She is a royal courtier… as a companion to two Queens, she is steeped in diplomatic niceties. She will have personally met more people of different races and cultures than most other human beings in history. As the wife of a former BBC chairman, she cannot be naive about the weight of her words… worst of all, she arrogantly persisted in what might be called “whitesplaining” even in the face of a polite rebuff.
Hussey’s husband, the former BBC chairman Phillips mentions, Marmaduke Hussey, was in post when Martin Bashir’s infamous Princess Diana interview took place. He was not told it was happening because of the very real fear that he would tell his wife and cause the palace to put a stop to it. He resigned two months after the broadcast and wrote in his autobiography that it “darkened [his] last months at the BBC”.
It’s also interesting to note that while the papers never fail to recognise Lady Hussey’s title, The Sun described Ngozi Fulani, who is the founder and CEO of Sistah Space, as “a charity worker”. Similarly, The Daily Telegraph pointedly calls her “an activist”. These choices are not accidental. Saying “activist” in this context means “well, she sort of brought it on herself, didn’t she?”
You can see that same implication in the opening paragraphs of the Telegraph story:
The late Queen’s longest-serving lady-in-waiting resigned on Wednesday after being accused of “interrogating” a Buckingham Palace guest about where she was “really” from.
Lady Susan Hussey, who had stayed on in an honorary role to support the new King, was said to have made “unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments” to a black, British-born domestic violence campaigner after asking her “what part of Africa” she was from.
It’s still an “accusation” rather than an incident that unequivocally happened.
Ngozi Fulani's words on the Today programme this morning were powerful and hard to misconstrue, unless your fee from a national newspaper requires that from you:
I'm very clear about what happened. You ask me where I’m from and I tell you from here, “Yeah but where are you really from”. I’m really from here. She said it more than once. And then “Where are your people from?”
This is not appropriate...I have to really question how this can happen in a space that’s supposed to protect women against all kinds of violence. Although it’s not physical violence, it is abuse.
In an interview with The Independent, Fulani said:
My nature is not that somebody of senior years should be vilified even though she did it to herself. I don’t want to be part of that. I’m old school.
This is an elder and that’s not an excuse, but I’m thinking why don’t we just do something different such as pull her up, re-educate, demote her, keep her from public-facing roles? Having been in this position for decades, it’s horrible that she goes out like this because of ignorance and racism.
But the story being told — both explicitly and by implication — is one of a black woman who got an old lady fired, instead of one where the palace is scrambling to shape events. It wants to dismiss this as another rotten apple, rather than an indictment on the soil in which monarchy grows.
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One of your best. The Wyatt interview was just a disgrace.