Immigration: a black day

By Richard North - December 2, 2022

One of the least important things in this world today is the supposed “trauma” of the black activist who currently calls herself Ngozi Fulani. At least, if that is all there was to it, it would definitely be unimportant, despite the BBC having run the story as its website lead for over 24 hours.

However, it seems, there is far more to the claimed incident than the BBC would have us believe, otherwise I wouldn’t be touching this story with a bargepole. But the very fact that the BBC has run it so prominently is a story in itself, especially in the context of my article yesterday on the increased “diversity” of Britain.

What gives the story legs, though, is a piece of information which the BBC did not consider worth troubling us with, that Fulani’s given name was Marlene Headley. She had changed her name after establishing her “connection” with Africa, when she went to college at the age of eighteen to take up a Community Studies course.

The college, according to the then Marlene Headley, had an African dance group and it was that day that her “life changed”. It was a “pivotal moment” for her, because this connection with Africa put her in touch with Africans from the continent. One rehearsal with them, she says, and “that was me”, adding:

To hear Africans with strong accents, learn about the food and the drumming touched my heart and took me to a place I had never been. It was everything for me and I had never felt so free as when I was listening to those drums. It was all so beautiful, the clothes, the beads, the cowrie shells, and the stories. My connection with Africa became my lifelong story. It’s identity, because ours was robbed from us. Over time, black people have been forced to try and be something they are not.

She evidently changed her name to Ngozi Fulani to reflect this “connection” and went on to teach African dance from the age of twenty-three, as a resident teacher in Hackney for twenty years.

During that period, she took young people to Africa every year to learn about their culture and their roots. She says she did all of this whilst meeting her partner and having her children.

It was also important to her, she says, that her own children visited Africa. She wanted them to see it for themselves rather than the stereotypical images of starving children with flies around their mouths living in huts.

That, she says, was a white perspective. She wanted to share “her culture” with them in her way “because the narrative had always come from people who don’t look like us or understand us or often don’t like us”.

She adds that she would like to think that she has had input into “making different cultures understand us”. Often, she says, “people speak for us, so I try to be very clear-speaking and truthful. Anyone who knows me, knows I will not intentionally try to hurt someone but if my truth causes offence, then I’m okay with that”.

In her current life, she has taken to wearing African clothing and jewellery, as well as affecting an African hairstyle, presenting herself visually in all respect as an African woman, fully reflecting her adopted African culture.

In 2015, she founded the charity Sistah Space Sanctuary, subsequently changing its name to a shorter “Sistah Space” in 2019. The Charity Commission file on the charity’s financial history shows only three years’ details.

In 2019, its income was a modest £14.71K with an expenditure of £18.85K. Its fortunes improved the following year when it attracted (unspecified) government contracts to the value of £40,000, bringing its total income to £50.73K with an expenditure of £41.60K.

For the charity though, 2021 (the last reporting period) was a bumper year when, with the aid of another £52.35K in government contracts, its total income soared to £363.51K, comfortably exceeding its expenditure of £163.30K.

According to the Charity Commission description, Sistah Space advocate for African heritage women and girls of African and Caribbean heritage affected by abuse.

The Charity offers one to one or group support. It attends court, housing and other relevant agencies where support might be required, and it hosts and attends events to deliver diversity training to individuals and organisations with a domestic violence remit. It also runs a charity shop for domestic violence survivors to access necessities.

A slightly different picture emerges from the charity’s website where it claims to be a specialist charity that supports African and Caribbean heritage women affected by domestic and sexual abuse.

Ostensibly, the structure of this charity would seem to present some legal problems. In providing services explicitly and exclusively to African and Caribbean heritage women, it is, on the face of it, discriminating against women not of those racial groups.

Yet, according to the Equality Act 2010, any person who discriminates against another on the grounds of race, or treats anyone less favourably than they treat others, again on the grounds of race, is committing a criminal offence.

Nothing of that seems to affect the egregious Ngozi Fulani though, who when she went to the Buckingham Palace bash, seems to have had the foresight to bring a recording device with her, enabling her to come away with an exact record of her encounter with Lady Hussey.

This, conveniently is published in full on Twitter, which has Sue Hussey asking the self-styled Ngozi Fulani, “Where are you from”?

To this, Fulani responds, “Sistah Space”, which has Hussey asking: “No, where do you come from?”. Fulani evades the question, replying that “we’re based in Hackney”. Hussey returns with a more direct question: “No, what part of Africa are YOU from”.

One might recall that this question is addressed to a woman who has adopted an African name (on her name badge, that Hussey had seen), embraces African culture as “her” culture, and wears obviously African-style clothing and jewellery.

At this point, which is probably crucial, Fulani doesn’t deny that she’s from Africa. Rather, she says to the question “what part of Africa do you come from”, “I don’t know, they didn’t leave any records”.

Hussey has now, effectively been suckered into a trap. She tells this woman who so demonstrably embraces an African culture and who does not deny coming from Africa, “Well, you must know where you come from. I spent time in France”. She then asks again, “Where are you from?”

Fulani responds, “here in the UK”, leaving a puzzled Hussey to say, “No, but what nationality are you?”. Says Fulani, “I am born here and am British”, with Hussey rattling back: “No, but where do you really come from, where do your people come from”.

Once again, we need to remind ourselves that Fulani is masquerading as an African, and has embraced the African culture. But, despite identifying so closely with African people, she chooses an aggressive response, feigning injured innocence with: “My people, lady, what is that?”

From there, it is all the way downhill in what has been described as “race baiting” a loyal lady-in-waiting to our queen. But, while Hussey may have been blunt and rather direct, as these upper crust women so often are, this was not in any way a “racist” exchange.

But, with the hullabaloo that has followed, and Fulani crying “abuse”, the race industry has piled in, bolstered by Ashitha Nagesh, the BBC’s community affairs correspondent, who asks, “What is it like to be repeatedly asked where you are from?”.

Well, if you adopt an African name, dress like an African and adopt the culture of an African, and then say you are British, to be asked where you’re really from is just polite conversation.

And if Fulani might have thought she was fostering the cause of “her people”, her great achievement of the day was to provide Farage with some more material – a black day for her and everybody else.

As for the broader picture, if you ostentatiously take an African name, dress in an African manner and embrace African cultural values, what statement are you making about yourself? Are you really British?