Kemi Badenoch reveals ‘hysterical’ level of personal attacks faced as a black woman

By Kiran Stacey, The Guardian

Tory leader tells Sunday Times she is surprised at amount of racism she has experienced since taking up post

Kemi Badenoch has spoken openly about the racism she has suffered as the first black woman to lead the Conservative party.

The Tory leader told the Sunday Times she had been surprised at the amount of racism she had faced since being elected, having previously insisted that Britain was “the best place in the world to be black”.

She told the paper: “There’s a certain cadre of people who clearly can’t cope with the fact that I won this and I’m doing it.

“The level of personal attacks from anonymous people, it’s hysterical. Not even just from MPs. I actually don’t think it’s that many MPs. I think it’s two to three people out of 120. That’s nothing. But online as well. People used to talk about Trump derangement syndrome. I think there’s a Kemi derangement syndrome: ‘How could she possibly have done this?’.”

She added that on social media, “there’s a lot of ethno-nationalism creeping up, lots of stuff about my race and my ethnicity and the tropes around, ‘well, she couldn’t possibly have done this all by herself’”.

Badenoch, who was born in Wimbledon but grew up in Nigeria before moving back to the UK aged 16, rarely talks at length about her race or heritage. She said recently she no longer felt Nigerian and has frequently criticised anti-racism campaigners and critical race theory.

She told the Sunday Times: “I always try to think of every possible explanation before I go to race and racism. I think that is a healthy way to run a society. I remember when I stood up a few years ago and said Britain is not a racist country – ethnic minorities do very well here, it is white working-class boys who are actually struggling on a lot of metrics, and I got pilloried for that.

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Kamala Harris has similarly experienced racism as a Black woman in politics.

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