In 1996, Abbott was criticised after she claimed that at her local hospital "blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls" were unsuitable as nurses because they had "never met a black person before". In response, Marc Wadsworth, founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, whose mother is Finnish, pointed out that the then-current Miss Finland, Lola Odusoga, was Black, of Nigerian and Finnish descent. "She's a Black Finn like me," he said. Abbott's position was supported by fellow Labour MP Bernie Grant: "Bringing someone here from Finland who has never seen a Black person before and expecting them to have some empathy with black people is nonsense. Scandinavian people don't know Black people—they probably don't know how to take their temperature".