So, where are you from?

 

Like, I suspect, many people, I've been watching the latest "royal scandal" with some mixture of scorn and incredulity. Ngozi Fulani and Lady Susan Hussey had a conversation at a public reception, and (probably) due to a difference in perspective and expectation that conversation went pear shaped, I believe that's all anyone can say at this point. Those Twitterati folks who have immediately jumped on the bandwagon of "the posh woman is a racist" (a serious and damaging allegation) are wrong factually and morally, as well as libellous! We all have conversations that go off the rails like this, all the time, not necessarily about origins of course, but that's irrelevant, what matters in determining racism is intent.

Hussey is an 80 year old person of (clearly) a certain background and upbringing (i.e. conditioned since birth!) and, in any conversation, perspectives matter! We can guess what her perspective on such events might be, we can try (if we wish to be objective) to walk a few steps in her shoes, i.e. having to make small talk with dozens of people whom you have no idea about, perhaps even no idea why they're there at all. On the other hand it's not hard to imagine that Fulani will have an utterly different perspective, likely reasonable, probably justified but also, perhaps defensive, perhaps antagonistic, perhaps exploitative, who knows?

In order to address the accusation of racism, it's not necessary to judge who's perspective is right and who's is wrong, merely to clarify and understand intent. The best we can do as "after-the-event" spectators is merely try to understand why any antagonism might be present and the possible motivation behind the words or actions, beyond that, unless we know the individuals concerned intimately we can't possibly comment on their views on race politics, monarchy, hair fashion or anything else! All we have is the evidence and unfortunately (as in any court of law) "feelings" and "perceptions" are not  the same as evidence. 

Firstly in the transcript of the conversation (if true) the first couple of interactions around the "where are you from" question there's clearly a misunderstanding going on; Fulani thinks Hussey is asking where her organisation is from and Hussey is attempting to initiate a conversation around the individual. This is totally normal, asking someone you've never met before "so, where are you from" is what's known in the trade as an "ice breaker", it's not inherently insulting, abusive, threatening or indeed racist. If I were in this position I'd ask this same question to anyone, of any colour, even someone obviously White-English (for example if I detected a regional accent) and I'd especially ask someone this question if their appearance suggested that the answer might be interesting and spark a deeper conversation, like someone from Africa! 

The next important question is why did Hussey persist with this line of questioning? There are many possibilities, some more likely than others. If we were being generous then we could suppose that she was eager to get to a point of commonality in order to progress the interaction, i.e. find out if there was somewhere in common that both parties knew something about that could be a topic of the (clearly awkward) exchange. Maybe, Hussey was just bored, maybe she was impatient, maybe she's just a rude old cow that had a headache and just wanted to get out of there, who knows? If the intent was racially motivated then we have to ask, what was Hussey hoping to gain from uncovering the fact that Fulani didn't actually know where her ancestors were from (the answer to that question is guaranteed not to be "Hackney"!) It's hard to fathom what such a motivation could be? Ridicule or intimidation perhaps, for what ends? In the end, in the absence of personal testimony from both sides and hard evidence, we can (and should) only ask ourselves which is more likely?

Of course, to be balanced in our view, we also need to understand the motivations of Fulani. For example, we'd have to ask why did she not close down the conversation by simply saying, "actually I was born here, I'm not African and have no idea where my ancestors were from", why didn't she just walk away?, why did she protract the conversation to the point of irritability (which she claims to have sensed) why not do what any (typical) person would do and say "anyway, I need another drink" and terminate it there and then. Why, we must ask, did she (as a first port of call) take the interaction directly to Twitter, why is she claiming to have been "racially abused" by a "royal", what is she hoping to gain from this and what are her links to the radical wing of the BLM movement? All questions that are valid and answers to which would help illuminate intent.

So, what are we left with? 

In my view, a storm in a teacup, a non-event that's being whipped into a frenzy by people who have something to gain by leveraging the "racist" angle, to use an old-fashioned term "gold-diggers". There are plenty of them around these days on both sides of this cultural fracture. 

What should we do about it? 

Well, if Fulani is insistent that this exchange represents racially inspired abuse then she can take her case to the police, we have perfectly adequate laws here that prohibit racist abuse! If not, then unfortunately, by taking her case to the populist "court of Twitter", my view is that people are perfectly justified in attributing no serious weight to her claims, we are free to ignore them and move on with more important matters.