Twitterstorm PR

There was too much decent footie on yesterday for me to become seriously annoyed by this story, but then on came Belgium…

It seems to me that if you attend an event at Buckingham Palace attired to suggest a proud heritage and as the representative of a group which protects women of African and Afro-Caribbean descent from culturally-persistent forms of masculine violence, “We’re based in Hackney” might not be the best way of heading off this gathering misunderstanding. 

 

 

Some of the ‘insistence’ was probably mutual here, though the text version is sadly bereft of the aggressive snootiness vs aggressive chippiness tonal layer. 

 

 

One can note that the old did not actually say “You must be from Africa” as the Beeb subsequently reported. 

 

Having previously once asked George Bush Snr (then POTUS) what he did for a living, Lady Susan Hussey on this occasion reportedly went the extra mile by first surveying Ngozi Fulani’s badge for clues. 

 

If a US-born woman of Guatemalan heritage were to attend a White House cocktail party in traditional Mayan corte, a broadly similar interrogation could reasonably be expected from the sort of doddery old politician likely to be in attendance...perhaps generationally-inclined to a certain awkwardness in such interactions. 

 

And of course most Yanks are usually only too willing to inform all and sundry where ‘their people’ are from. Indeed, the furore unleashed here led me to speculate what an Irish American could wear in order to set up a similar sort of social media gotcha.

 

We Brits don’t manufacture much these days besides outrage.

 

 

(In Britain the more common done thing is to adopt a name and fashion habits that allow one to 'pass'.)