BY NAN STAFF WRITER
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. Nov. 30, 2022: A Buckingham Palace staffer, who British media has said is also a former lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth II, has resigned after a racist exchange with a Caribbean roots UK advocate Tuesday night at a Palace reception.
Ngozi Fulani, who was born in the UK but whose parents are from the Caribbean, is the CEO of Sistah Space, an organization that provides specialist services to women of African and Caribbean heritage affected by abuse.
Fulani was invited to a glittering reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday hosted by Camilla, the queen consort and wife of King Charles III.
It was at this reception where Fulani said on Twitter that “Lady SH, approached me, (and) moved my hair to see my name badge.”
She then related that the woman persistently asked about her heritage and would not accept that she was a British national.
“Where do you really come from;” “where do your people come from;” and “when did you first come here?,” Fulani said were the questions.
When Fulani said she answered she was from the London neighborhood of Hackney, the household member insisted: “No, what part of Africa are YOU from?.”
Sistah Space said that it “serves no purpose to name & shame” the person in question on its Twitter account on Wednesday, adding “it is the system that needs to be revised.”
“Yes, the person was offensive, but it serves no purpose to name & shame her, it would make us just as bad. We prefer that this be handled kindly,” Sistah Space said
“The rest of the event is a blur,” Fulani added in a tweet that has been liked 45.4K times and retweeted over 11.5K times.
Less than 24 hours later, Buckingham Palace said the staff member had resigned and offered her “profound apologies for the hurt caused.”
“We take this incident extremely seriously and have investigated immediately to establish the full details,” the palace said in a statement on Wednesday. “In this instance, unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments have been made.”
The BBC and London newspapers identified her as Susan Hussey, 83, a close friend of Queen Elizabeth II, and godmother to Prince William. The palace did not confirm the staff member’s identity.
“I want to address the story relating to a guest attending a reception at Buckingham Palace last night,” a Kensington Palace spokesperson said before the start of the Boston visit today. “This is a matter for Buckingham Palace but as the Prince of Wales’ spokesperson I appreciate you’re all here and understand you’ll want to ask about it. So let me address it head on. I was really disappointed to hear about the guest’s experience at Buckingham Palace last night. Obviously, I wasn’t there, but racism has no place in our society. The comments were unacceptable and it is right that the individual has stepped aside with immediate effect.”
The incident comes as amid accusations of racism in the royal family leveled by Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, a biracial American-born actress and the wife of Prince Harry, William’s brother. In a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, Meghan said that a royal family member, whom she did not name, had expressed concern about the skin color of her unborn child.
It also comes on the heels of the Windrush scandal, which began in 2018 concerning mostly Black Caribbean people who were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office.
