It’s difficult to know where to start with this, coming from a member of one of the oldest, most privileged and supposedly most respected institutions of this country which has had repeated and ongoing scandals involving racism.
To begin… Hussey didn’t just ask about origins. The black woman told Hussey where she was from, but Hussey pursued it in an offensive manner. Would Hussey have pursued it with a red-head with an apostrophe in her surname, or a prefix of ‘Mac’, if she’d said she was from London? Of course not.
The problem with Hussey is that she probably didn’t realise she was behaving in a racist way, because she’s been doing it all her life. But times have changed, we’ve moved on, and it is a problem now, and time to learn about it.
Oh, but she was elderly, they say. So, what is officially the age at which it’s permitted to be racist? Is it OK if you’re over 70 to move a black woman’s hair and tell her you don’t believe her when she says she’s from London? Or should it be 65.5, maybe? 60, anyone??
Perhaps it’s the same with yourself, JI. You see it as OK because you’ve been doing it all your life, and on top of that you’ve been persuaded and gaslit into thinking it’s OK by the likes of Farage and other Kippers, as well as black people in the cabinet who claim white privilege doesn’t exist.
Yet, racism is all around us. Show me a white footballer whose skin colour is brought into the discussion if he misses a penalty in an England shirt! And we end up talking about stuff like this woman’s conversation, which is trivial in itself, but so very serious. Why? Because it’s symptomatic of the epic inequality – social, racial and financial – even in institutions which claim to represent us, which is at the root of so many of this country’s problems. We should be ashamed.
