The Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are facing off with different awards in different East Coast cities featuring different members of the Kennedy clan.
William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, are in Boston to present his President John F. Kennedy-inspired Earthshot Prize Awards for environmental achievements on Friday, Dec. 2 at the MGM Music Hall in Boston. Among the highlights of the Waleses’ visit will be a tour of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum with the late president’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy. Meanwhile. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, head to New York City where they’ll receive the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award on Tuesday, Dec. 6, for “moral courage” in the face of racism, said Kerry Kennedy, one of RFK’s daughters.
The Kennedys have had a long association with the British, going back to patriarch Joseph P. Sr.’s 1938 appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. No doubt it amused FDR to have the Irish Catholic Kennedys take England by storm with their hale and hearty good looks and charm. Ultimately, however, Joseph P.’s isolationist politics and pessimistic view of England’s chances against the Nazis clashed with Roosevelt’s growing realization that a war for the very soul of civilization was inevitable and Kennedy was forced to resign from his post.
But a poignant union formed between vibrant daughter Kathleen (“Kick”) and William Cavendish, the very Protestant Marquess of Hartington and the heir apparent to the 10th Duke of Devonshire. Had they lived, the couple would’ve been the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, but he was killed on the battlefield in France four months after their marriage in 1944. (She would die with her subsequent companion, the eighth Earl Fitzwilliam, in a 1948 plane crash.)
Old attachments — British and American — run deep and hard, particularly in our hyper-partisan era, in which everything is black and white, with no subtle gradations. In addition to dueling couples in rival cities with different branches of the Kennedy family, we get the contretemps over Lady Susan Hussey’s encounter with Ngozi Fulani at a Buckingham Palace event to fight against gender-based violence. What should’ve been a no-brainer featuring women of every walk of life hosted by Queen Consort Camilla turned into more than a dustup as Hussey, an 83-year-old godmother to Prince William and a former lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth II, proceeded to move Fulani’s hair to see her name badge and then drilled the Black chief executive of the nonprofit Sistah Space about her background (British nationality, Caribbean descent, African heritage). After several questions and answers, Hussey reportedly said, “I knew we’d get there,” presumably meaning to the bottom of where Fulani’s family was originally from.
The whole exchange came off as condescending and patronizing, as if Hussey were a teacher trying to get a particularly dim student to understand that two and two equal four. In the zero tolerance for racial prejudice in the post-Megxit era, she was forced to apologize and resign, as sides were quickly drawn with conservative royalists crying foul and wokeism while the liberal pro-Harry and Meghan team took a victory lap. (At the Boston Celtics game, the Prince and Princess of Wales were booed.)
But must everything be either/or? It isn’t “woke” to display politesse and pragmatism in meeting a stranger at an event. “Hello, I’m So and So. How do you do. What organization are you with? Please tell me about it.” Instead, we got the waning days of Empire, the Raj and the Kipling-esque “white man’s burden.” Hussey should’ve known better.
But I don’t think she, a woman from another era, should’ve been forced from her post. Instead, I think Hussey should’ve been admonished in private and apologized while King Charles III or the queen consort followed up with a visit to Sistah Space as a way to mend and build bridges. In any event, it’s no reflection on Prince William.
Similarly, there’s no reason to demean the Robert F. Kennedy award — or for that matter, Bobby Kennedy himself, a man who gave his life for his country, as some conservative posters have — because the Sussexes receipt of the honor is premature in many minds.
There is a middle ground here that acknowledges that one thing — RFK, Prince William — has nothing to do with another — the Sussexes, Hussey respectively — and that we don’t think as monolithic groups.
We’re capable of independent thinking — still — just as we are capable of compassion toward those we welcome to events and those who make mistakes.
Everyone wants to feel important, as if s/he has dignity. Everyone wants to be forgiven.
We need a more nuanced approach to how we treat people — on both sides of the Atlantic.