The late Queen’s longest serving lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, has resigned and apologised for ‘unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments’ she made to Ngozi Fulani, the founder of domestic abuse charity Sistah Space, at a Violence Against Women and Girls reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. Hussey, 83, repeatedly asked Fulani, 61, where she ‘really came from’ with the charity founder likening the conversation to an ‘interrogation’.
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Buckingham Palace has apologised on behalf of Lady Hussey and a spokesperson for Prince William said, ‘racism has no place in our society’. But at the same time, a sinister defence of Lady Hussey has already taken over social media. Yesterday, ‘She’s 83’ was trending all day as some sought to justify her comments based on the fact that she’s an older woman.
‘Her sin, if there was one, was being old,’ Petronella Wyatt wrote for The Spectator. ‘Most pensioners are unfamiliar with the wonders of woke etiquette and its pitfalls… People of Sue Hussey’s generation did not grow up in today’s multi-cultural Britain.’
Fulani has since responded to the discourse, telling the BBC that to expect racism of Hussey because of her age is ‘kind of a disrespect - an ageism kind of thing.’ And on Sky News, Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu stated that if anything, her age should be one of the reasons she knows better, having lived through so many anti-racism movements.
‘If she’s 83, that means she was around – and close to the Queen - during the period of decolonization,’ Dr Mos-Shogbamimu said. ‘She was around during the end of apartheid; she was around during the civil rights movement in the US and UK. She was also around during the global Black Lives Matter movement which was just two years ago…I’m still asking the same question James Baldwin asked about 60 years ago, which is when will white people progress?’
Others have agreed on social media, tweeting their support to Fulani.