Lady Hussey and the truth we dare not speak

Though it was sensible for Lady Susan Hussey to resign, I do find the chorus of disapproval that has greeted her unpleasant. Reading a transcript of her exchange with Ngozi Fulani of Sistah Space I feel rather sorry for both of them – the only word springing to mind being ‘misunderstanding’. Such different backgrounds; generations so far apart; these misunderstandings can easily occur. At a Buckingham Palace reception where Ms Fulani may have felt nervous and awkward (as would I) it’s altogether possible she did think Lady Hussey’s asking where she came from was meant rudely. But I think it was not. And if not, shouldn’t the incident just be put down to clumsiness?

That last question is genuine because some do think that, regardless of motive, the very act of asking someone like Ms Fulani about their origins is rude. The question should simply not be asked. It is this and not the Palace encounter that I want to write about. We seem to be getting into an awful muddle.

There can be no doubt we do sometimes feel curious about where someone comes from. We don’t necessarily mean where they were born; Boris Johnson was born in New York but nobody would say he ‘comes from’ America because his family don’t. We often mean where someone’s forebears came from, even if they themselves were born in Britain. It’s fair to say it’s not rude to ask where someone comes from when the most likely answer would name a town, county or even nation within the United Kingdom.

Then how about abroad? Accents interest me and if someone’s accent is foreign I’ll often ask where they’re from, prefacing my question with a reference to their accent. Nobody, so far, has ever taken offence.

Not problematic, then, if the enquiry is about where abroad a foreign accent points. And not problematic if the implied enquiry is about coming from somewhere on our islands.

Well now, by eliminating what’s not problematic, I think we’re whittling down to what is. It’s about race, isn’t it? Race or ethnicity. And when people talk about ethnicity they often mean race. And by race they usually mean skin colour. Of course racism can be white-on-white but the word and concept gain their power and notoriety from the history of our relations (and those of other formerly imperial nations) with colonial subjects who were not white.

I put it to you that colour is what’s implicitly under discussion. If Ms Fulani had been of white Swedish ancestry and wearing a thick knitted jumper of recognisably Nordic design, would it have been hurtful or ‘racist’ to ask about her origins, even if she turned out to be a British subject? No, she wouldn’t have minded. Sandi Toksvig, who’s from Denmark, wouldn’t mind being asked about that.

So let’s not beat about the bush. If a person’s skin is not white, and only if a person’s skin is not white, it is coming to be regarded as rude to enquire about their origins. Thus does the class of liberal, tolerant, ‘inclusive’ people (to which it might be said I myself belong) betray – by its embarrassments about language – its hidden condescension. Basil Fawlty’s ‘Don’t mention the war’ becomes ‘Don’t mention colour’. Why not? Is there anything wrong with not being white? Not in my book.

Liberals, however, have redefined the very word ‘ethnicity’ as code for what they must not say: ‘skin colour’. Euphemisms and coy circumlocutions are excellent markers of unacknowledged unease. Out go ‘old’, ‘fat’ and even (these days) ‘Welsh’ (as in ‘the Welsh’) and in come ‘senior’, ‘large’ and ‘the people of Wales’. We may genuinely mean to be kind by skirting a topic, but in fact we’re acknowledging a prejudice. When others politely step around what you are (‘confirmed bachelor’, ‘never married’, ‘lifelong companion’ – I’ve had it all) it serves only as the reminder of an unvoiced embarrassment. Those non-white Brits who complain about being asked where they’re from collude unwittingly in the insulting supposition that there could be anything awkward about their answer.

The headline to a profile in the Times catches my eye. ‘I never thought I’d see a south Asian prime minister.’ South Asian? This is becoming the advised term for someone from what we used to call the ‘subcontinent’. ‘South Asian’ may soon be the only polite way you can describe a non-South-American person whose skin is brown. Discomfort about words such as ‘Indian’ has been increased by the accession of a prime minister whose Britishness is unquestioned but whose origins are Indian. ‘Indian’ sits awkwardly between an ethnicity and a nationality.

I acknowledge the complexities and the anxieties, and have no answers. But is ‘south Asian’ really being used geographically here? If not, then we’re positing an ethnicity that doesn’t exist. Why? People’s origins are so important, yet we seem to be cutting ourselves off from fascinating conversations about when and why a person or their ancestors came to Britain – and all because of our silly and unacknowledged preoccupation with pigmentation.

Because of one thing there can be no doubt: nobody white would qualify as south Asian, whatever their passport. This is equally true of the continent where I was born and raised. Had my youthful dreams of reaching Downing Street come true, the headline ‘First African prime minister of the UK’ would definitely not have been used. Pity, then, the Afrikaners, whose very name means ‘African’ and who have no country but South Africa: they still don’t qualify. Even Egyptians wouldn’t normally be called Africans.

Depressingly to me, it really is about skin colour, but we cast desperately and illogically around, plundering the lexicons of geography, nationality and ethnicity (perhaps we should try geology next) for ways of not saying so. ‘Coloured’ has yielded, shamefaced, to ‘of colour’. Black people alone have stood up for their pigmentation, and reclaimed ‘black’ from what was once abusive territory.

I wish the same could be done for ‘brown’. Golden brown is my favourite skin colour. Perhaps in another life I can be brown. For this blessing I’d happily accept questions where I’m from.