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Buckingham Palace 'Banned' Ethnic Minorities From Getting Office Roles: Report

The Queen’s chief financial manager informed civil servants that “it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners” to administrative roles in the royal household. However, they were allowed to work as domestic servants.

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Ayusmita Chatterjee
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Racism in the Royal Family ,Queen at Prince Philip's funeral
Racism in the Royal Family: A current report by the Guardian made shocking revelations of yet other occurrences of racism in the Royal household, this time, it is dated back to the 1960s.
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The report claim that the Queen’s courtiers banned “coloured immigrants or foreigners” from serving in clerical roles in the royal household until at least the late 1960s.

The pieces of reported information, that will allegedly reignite the debate over the British royal family and racism, was discovered at the National Archives while an investigation was undergoing that examined the royal family’s use of an arcane parliamentary procedure, that allegedly included secretly influencing the content of British laws, known as Queen’s consent. 

The laws of the 1960s that illegalised the practice of refusing to employ individuals on the grounds of their race or ethnicity provided an exception for the Queen. This exemption proved to be challenging for those of ethnic minorities working as household servants to complain to the courts of being discriminated against, as per the report. 

The documents, found during the said investigation, reportedly threw light on how the Palace allegedly negotiated controversial clauses which exempted the Queen and her household from laws that prevent race and sex discrimination.

Nevertheless, the Royal family refused all the accusations by claiming that they were not exempted from any laws but had a separate process for hearing complaints related to such discriminations. However, when they were asked what the process was, they did not respond as per the Guardian report.

The Queen’s chief financial manager reportedly informed civil servants that “it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners” to administrative roles in the royal household. However, they were allowed to work as domestic servants.

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Although any particular day or year wasn't noted that marked the end of the practice, it has been put to an end now. However, the Palace has till date refrained from answer questions about the ban and when it was revoked.

The undated removal of the ban can be proved by the fact that people from ethnic minority backgrounds started being employed in the 1990s. However, before that decade, no official recordings were taken that noted the employment of people from racial backgrounds, according to the report.

The Royal Family had to face backlash when Meghan Markle, the family’s first mixed-race member, claimed to have suicidal thoughts during her time in the royal family. She also alleged that a member of the family had expressed concern about her child’s skin colour.

Buckingham Palace British Royal Family royal family racism
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