Yes, Calling Someone a"Coconut" is Racist.
Yes, Calling Someone a"Coconut" is Racist.
No, it should not be criminalised.
British teacher, Marieha Hussain, has been found ‘not guilty’ of a “racially aggravated public order offence” for protesting at a Pro-Palestine march carrying a sign depicting the former Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, as coconuts. The symbol of the coconut, on its most essential level, indicates that while someone may be brown on the outside, they are white (or dedicated to upholding white interests) on the inside. Ms. Hussain’s acquittal is good news for freedom of belief and speech. However, that such a ridiculous prosecution happened at all suggests that we are, yet again, having trouble being a serious, grown-up country with a strong and proud cultural memory of our prominent role in the development of liberal thought.
The most prominent arguments going back and forth about it would seem to confirm this suspicion. It is profoundly depressing to me how counterintuitive it seems to be for so many people to separate these two thoughts, and then hold them both in their head at the same time.
This idea is bad.
Nobody should be arrested for expressing bad ideas.
Instead, a great amount of time is being spent arguing over whether or not the accusation of ‘coconut’ is racist, as though this should determine whether or not it is acceptable to have charged Ms. Hussain with having expressed it. People who hold that this was a reasonable and ethical prosecution typically make good arguments for it being racist. They say that the ‘brown on the outside but white on the inside” symbolism seeks to constrain the ability of black and brown Brits to have their own minds, and participate fully in our liberal democratic system from any position in it and makes very negative generalisations about the state of white Brits’ minds (or what “white interests” are). However, when they then go on to say that, this being the case, it was right to prosecute the (now fired) schoolteacher, they appear not to realise that they are also seeking to constrain the ability of Ms. Hussain, and others who use this term, to have her own mind and express her own political views.
Conservative MP, Ben Obese-Jecty, completely sailed past the freedom of belief and speech issue and appealed to his own lived experience when he said,
As someone who was on the receiving end of the “coconut” racial slur as recently as last week I find it incredible that people believe they are within their rights to use it.
I suspect Marieha Mohsin Hussain won’t be a teacher once she’s been convicted.
Right-wing cancel culture is still cancel culture and I would remind the ‘honourable gentleman’ that we need our MPs to uphold the principles of liberal democracy in which all political ideas may be expressed and all members of parliament criticised on the grounds of them (provided that this does not amount to actions which are rightfully crimes such as threatening behaviour or harassment).
Political broadcaster, Albie Ancona, said,
As someone who has been called a coconut & told “they aren’t black enough” since they could speak. If we’re criminalising “hate”, I’m glad we’re making an example of this teacher who held up a “coconuts” sign at the pro-Palestine march. It’s a degrading & dehumanising racist slur.
If Mr. Ancona recognises the problem with “hate speech” style prosecutions, one would hope that he would take the opportunity to put those principles first and stand up for the rights of someone whose speech he himself finds morally abhorrent. Our liberal democracy depends on people doing just that.
It was particularly disappointing that Sunder Katwala of British Future, who can usually be relied upon to consistently object to racism and be an important moderating and unifying voice, posted,
I find a worryingly large number of people seem to be unaware that "coconut" is not just deplorable - and no way to make a political argument- but that it is unlawful racist abuse, that can be prosecuted & has been prosecuted.
It was a shame that Mr. Katwala did not follow up the important point, neglected by so many others, that determining what views someone should have based on their skin colour does not constitute a sound political argument by explaining why, but instead by simply stating that it can be prosecuted and seeming not to regard this as a bad thing.
The right to freedom of political expression is rightly being raised by defenders of Ms. Hussain, but few are the arguments that this should apply to everybody consistently. Instead, arguments have largely focused on why this particular political speech when made by people of a certain identity should be protected by law. Defenders of Ms. Hussein have argued that the symbol of the coconut is not a racial slur but a legitimate intra-community critique of black and brown individuals who are believed to behave and speak in ways that promote the interests of white supremacy. In the worldview which makes them consider their critique legitimate, we are living in a society dominated by oppressive systems of white supremacy which operate both visibly and beneath the surface. Racism is to be understood on this systemic level as a power dynamic that can only be imposed upon the minority of Britons racialised as black and brown by the majority of Britons racialised as white. Because they believe the power systems of the UK, overt and covert, to be so stratified along racial lines, there is a moral imperative for black and brown people to all hold this political view and, from within it, maintain solidarity against the systems of power that oppress them.
By being the Prime Minister and Home Secretary of the then governing Conservative Party, with the latter in particular being to the furthest right of her party and have very hardline views on immigration, Mr. Sunak and Ms. Braverman flout this moral imperative. Further, they are seen as doing particular harm to the objective of dismantling the white supremacist power structures. They do this by enabling Britons inclined to doubt that white supremacy is the dominant power structure that underlies UK society generally and Tory policies particularly to point out that the people creating the policies and running the country are, in fact, brown. Therefore, the symbol of the coconut - brown on the outside and white on the inside - is used to convey that the former PM and Home Secretary are not legitimate voices of Britons of racial minority and that they are only superficially brown - their skin colour - while inside they are motivated by upholding white supremacy.
This is standpoint epistemology rooted in Whiteness Studies, Critical Race (Legal) Theory which holds that there is a authentic '“voice of color” which is uniquely competent to speak for their group about race and racism, and postcolonial theory which uses a form of “strategic essentialism” to consolidate members of minority groups under one political identity for the purposes of political activism. This has continued into contemporary critical theories of race and the “Decolonise” movement - Critical Social Justice (CSJ). In essence, CSJ standpoint epistemology holds that specific identity groups have specific beliefs, values and experiences which are authentic and politically specific and members of those groups who diverge from them are inauthentic and have either (most charitably) been conditioned into internalised bigotry or (least charitably) are seeking to ingratiate themselves with the dominant majority to secure individual advantage at the expense of their group. This brings with it a moral right to police the beliefs, values, speech and actions of members of one’s own group and “hold them accountable” for not believing, speaking or behaving in ways that uphold the ‘authentic’ beliefs, values and political stance for people of that group.
Writer and broadcaster Nels Abbey has been at the forefront of the defence of Ms, Hussain. Referencing the earlier criminal conviction of Labour councillor, Shirley Brown, for calling Conservative councillor, Jay Jethwar, a coconut, and, rightly, describing this as a crime against free speech, Mr. Abbey said,
Hate crime legislation was supposed to protect minorities. The extremely dubious, racially ignorant and culturally tone-deaf 2010 ruling in the case of Brown vs Jethwa, has changed that.
The ruling has effectively resulted in hate crime legislation going from a means of protecting minorities to a method of persecuting some racial minorities. It reflects how unsafe the British court system is on matters of race that require cultural nuance.
and
‘Coconut’, like ‘Uncle Tom’, is not a racist term – when uttered within the community.
It is a form of in-group, satirical political critique – one rooted in this history of formerly colonised people. It is a way of calling out behaviour that may well be harmful to other minorities. It is more often than not an anti-racist statement.
Cultural nuance is always a good thing, but we cannot both protect freedom of speech and have legislation which decides who is allowed to make which kinds of political critique based on what race they are.
Lawyer, Shola Mos-Shogbamimu expressed this concept of race-based critique being acceptable within an in-group when she said:
Black and brown people call racial gatekeepers like Braverman and Sunak ‘coconut’ for the hate they perpetuate on their communities… When we come to questions around what racism is, who is objectively a racist, who is an enabler of racism and how language steeped in white supremacy plays a role in our society between races, the law is yet to catch up.
It is quite clearly incorrect to say that “black and brown people” call Braverman and Sunak this. The people who have been seen to do so most prominently have been black and brown but so have the people most prominently objecting to it. Mr. Abbey and Dr. Mos-Shogbamimu are correct to say that there is an issue of in-groups here, but with their purely identitarian focus, they neglect the right of black and brown individuals to choose their own political in-groups. If this racial in-group policing becomes a strong social norm or, even worse, “the law catches up” and it becomes protected by race-based laws. black and brown Brits would face an additional disadvantage in accessing the marketplace of ideas and having a political voice that is represented across the political spectrum compared to white Brits. It is difficult to see this outcome as anti-racist. It is essential that every individual has the right to choose their own community and not have it chosen for them on the grounds of their race. As the Nigerian British writer, Jide Ehizele, remarked to me on the subject of the ‘coconut’ slur,
In the political context, it is used to ostracise. To make it known that this person is a threat to the "in-group". Its primary intention in the mind of users may not be to racially harass (although it naturally does as a result). I think there is space for intra-community critique (not racial slurs) but only if you have signed up for that cultural tribe. If, for example, a black person does not self-identify as a black nationalist then they should not be accountable for their thoughts which clash with this ideology. There is no monolithic black community.
This is, of course, demonstrably true. Black and brown conservatives, leftists, capitalists, socialists, nationalists, globalists, liberals, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and atheists all quite clearly exist. To suggest that those whose views do not conform to one specific racial form of left-wing identity politics have capitulated to white supremacy is insulting on both an individual level and a cultural one. On an individual level, it implies that the individuals in question do not have minds of their own and cannot evaluate the full range of political views, and decide which they will accept and which they will reject. On a cultural level, it demands that people who come from a variety of diasporas with cultural and political values that may be compatible with a variety of British cultural and political values leave behind any that cannot be assimilated into the decidedly Western left-wing ideology that is Critical Social Justice. This is a form of cultural nuance and even colonialism that I feel Nels Abbey neglects.
Racial standpoint epistemology with its inherent collectivism and essentialism has been critiqued by liberals of all races, because inherent to liberalism are the beliefs in individualism, pluralism and universalism. Individualism holds that nobody should be constrained by their group identity and defends individual liberties - freedom of belief, speech, association etc. Pluralism upholds tolerance of difference and defends the value of viewpoint diversity for advancing knowledge and resolving conflict. Universalism recognises our shared humanity and demands equal rights, freedoms and responsibilities to be extended to all. We simply do not accept that any individual is morally obliged to subordinate his or her own beliefs, values and mind to that of a collective with whom they share some immutable characteristics.
Not only is standpoint epistemology demonstrably false and when enforced upon people by in-group bullying, unethical, it is also counterproductive. Surely, surely any left-wing person can think of better grounds on which to criticise the former Prime Minister and Home Secretary than whether their values match what they consider to be right for their skin colour?
I have been writing so far as a liberal concerned with freedom of belief and speech but allow me, for a moment to write one paragraph as an economic leftist. The overwhelming problem with those elements of the left who neglect socio-economic class and focus solely on racial standpoint epistemology is that they derail important discussions of the material impact of Tory economic and social policies on the most vulnerable people. If you were asserting that Kwasi Kwarteng was inauthentically black while the rest of us were trying to address the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just crashed the economy and how this would likely impact those having to choose between heating and eating, your concept of left-wing politics are severely skewed. So are they if your response to the PM saying that we all needed to ‘keep our nerve’ when interest rates flew up and people who could actually afford homes were more worried about keeping them was to call him a disgrace to brown people. So too if your criticisms of Suella Braverman were that she had the wrong politics for a daughter of immigrants as she was ‘dreaming’ of dropping vulnerable people in Rwanda and declaring homelessness to be a ‘lifestyle choice’ that should be addressed by taking homeless people’s tents away. The problem with all of those people was never that they had the wrong views for their race. It was that they had the wrong views for the wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in our country.
So, is calling someone a coconut - brown on the outside, white on the inside - racist? Yes, of course it is. It may not see itself as seeking to limit and constrain black and brown people’s freedom of belief, speech, association and access to the marketplace of ideas and political power, but that is the effect it has if it succeeds in pressuring people to censor their real values and beliefs and comply with one ideology. Meanwhile, it represents either white people or values and interests seen as ‘white’ (piece steelmanning the difference between white people and “whiteness” forthcoming) as something inherently despicable and shameful and inferior to those which are held by right-thinking black and brown people. (Standpoint epistemology doesn’t work for white people either. My values and interests are no more represented by Sunak and Braverman than Ms. Hussain’s are). In both cases, it ascribes social and moral significance to skin colour in a way that is racially essentialist and denies the individual agency of everybody by assigning values to them on the grounds of their race.
Should the term therefore be criminalised and individuals who use it be penalised? Of course not. People may perfectly reasonably object to the essentialist stereotyping and collectivism of racial standpoint epistemology, but they must do so in arguments, not criminal charges. People who live in a liberal democracy must have the right to hold and express ideas that others believe to be appalling and clearly erroneous, provided they do not impose them on any individual in such a way that they cannot choose to ignore, even if this is psychologically difficult. We must protect this right for a number of reasons including that having bad ideas is an essential individual liberty, we cannot hope to be able to defeat bad ideas if we cannot get at them and we can never be truly confident that a bad idea is bad if we have banned expression of it. It is therefore particularly important to protect political stances and criticisms of the government. Once we start prosecuting people for saying they believe prominent members of the government to be holding the wrong views (for whatever reason and however insultingly), we start down a very dark path that a liberal democracy cannot afford to travel if it wants to survive.