Author Anita Sethi met the Prince of Wales this week
Prince Charles told a woman of Guyanese descent who told him she was from Manchester that: ‘You don’t look it!’
Author Anita Sethi met the Prince of Wales at the Commonwealth People’s Forum where she was speaking earlier this week. The day was scheduled to discuss ‘Politics of Hope: Taking on Injustice in the Commonwealth’.
The prince met the Ms Sethi before the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, where it was today announced Charles will succeed the Queen as Head of the 53-nation global body.
Ms Sethi said she shook the prince’s hand and told him her mother was born in Guyana, a former British colony in South America, and she had written an essay for an anthology, which she was carrying, about descendants of indenture.
She claimed Prince Charles then asked: ‘And where are you from?’
When she replied ‘Manchester, UK’ he said ‘Well, you don’t look like it’ and laughed, before he was quickly ushered on.
The author wrote that she was ‘stunned’ by the gaffe.
‘Prince Charles was endorsed by the Queen, in her opening speech to the heads of government, to be the future head of the Commonwealth: it’s her ‘sincere wish’ that he become so’ she said.
Ms Sethi says Prince Charles told her ‘you don’t look like you’re from Manchester’
‘That the mooted next leader of an organisation that represents one-third of the people on the planet commented that I, a brown woman, did not look as if I was from a city in the UK is shocking’.
Ms Sethi added that she believes that some people ‘including the prince’ need an urgent history lesson about ‘immigration, the British empire, the Commonwealth and colonialism’ and she is angered by the ‘casual ignorance in the corridors of power, an ignorance that also permeates society – not least because some British people of colour invited here have been threatened with deportation.’
Ms Sethi says she was ‘stunned’ by the prince’s gaffe and she could ‘show him her passport to prove where she was born’
Ms Sethi also said she could show Prince Charles her passport and prove she was born in Manchester, but she’s unable to prove where her family are from originally because historical evidence that her ancestors were shipped over from India to work as indentured labourers on sugar colonies in the Caribbean was destroyed.
She ended her cutting piece with a message to Prince Charles saying ‘I am here because you were there’.
Since sharing the news, Ms Sethi has received an outpouring of support on social media, with people comparing Prince Charles to his father Prince Philip, who is well-known for ill-judged remarks.
MailOnline has approached Anita Sethi and Clarence House for comment.
Prince Charles poses with his mother, the Queen in the Blue Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace as the Queen hosts a dinner during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting