It is beyond appalling to watch the Susan Hussey debacle unfold in real time, with Buckingham Palace completely bungling their reaction to the incident from November 29th. To recap, that Tuesday, there was a daytime reception at BP, hosted by Queen Camilla. The whole point of the reception was to bring together activists and advocates attached to work about domestic violence and violence against women. Ngozi Fulani was there representing Sistah Space, a non-profit dealing with violence against Black women specifically. Within minutes of Fulani’s entrance at the reception, Susan Hussey – a long time lady-in-waiting to QEII and an emeritus LIW to Camilla – began her racist interrogation of Fulani.

When Fulani reported Hussey’s comments and behavior the next day, the palace went into ass-covering mode rather than accountability mode. Instead of calling Fulani, apologizing to her and giving her a platform for Sistah Space and her own experiences, the Palace lied about contacting her. They pushed out Hussey and issued a statement about her unacceptable behavior. And that’s it. That’s all that was done. Since then, Hussey has been protected and coddled by the media and the palace while Fulani had to fend for herself as a wave of online and print-media attacks were launched against her. The palace could have and should have stepped in within a day or two and issued a public statement to at least make a pretense of shielding Fulani. They did not. So the attacks and smears continued, and now Sistah Space is temporarily shutting down.

A charity led by a black woman who was repeatedly asked where she was “really” from at a royal event has temporarily stopped its work over safety. Sistah Space was thrown into the spotlight when its founder, Ngozi Fulani, said she felt she was “interrogated” by Lady Susan Hussey at Buckingham Palace last month. It says it has now “ceased many” of its operations over safety.

Ms Fulani has said she suffered online abuse after speaking out. Lady Hussey – Prince William’s godmother and the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting – has since left her honorary role within the Royal Household.

In a statement on its Instagram page, domestic violence charity Sistah Space said: “Thank you for the continued support and messages. Unfortunately recent events meant that we were forced to temporarily cease many of our operations to ensure the safety of our service users and our team. We are overwhelmed by the amount of support and encouragement and look forward to fully reinstating our services as soon as safely possible.”

Ms Fulani said earlier this week that she, her family and team had been put under “immense pressure” and received “horrific abuse” on social media.

[From BBC]

As Fulani said last week, this is what happens when Black women report their abuse, this is what happens when Black women stand up for themselves against racist pigs. It’s completely disgusting that Buckingham Palace still hasn’t done one f–king thing to help or protect Fulani or Sistah Space. I’m not saying that a personal statement from Queen Camilla would stop the harassment of Fulani, but I do think it would minimize the nature of the harassment and abuse. Besides that, it would just be good optics and these people only give a f–k about the optics. Instead, the palace’s silence is their complicity, once again. Over and over. They’re telling us who they are: they fundamentally do not believe that Black women should be protected. Queen Camilla was so eager to take credit for all of this work against domestic violence, then Camilla stands idly by as one of the activists invited to the palace is inundated with abuse over reporting the racism she suffered AT THE PALACE.

Photos courtesy of Sistah Space, Avalon Red, Cover Images & Sky News.