Coconuts being nicked shows what a cesspit the UK really is

  • Post last modified:June 26, 2024
  • Reading time:10 mins read


After being charged with a racially aggravated public order offence, teacher Marieha Hussain appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates Court. What did she do to warrant the cops paying attention to so-called racism? Well, she’s the person who held up a sign calling Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman coconuts. Yep, that’s all.

And, to pile the ridiculous on to the absurd, police arrested protesters and actual coconuts who showed up to support Marieha. One social media user shared the original image of Marieha’s placard at a Palestine march showing Sunak and Braverman under a coconut tree:

This is the same country with an institutionally racist police force, systemic racism in healthcare, education disadvantaging Black and Brown children, a racist ruling party, and a racist opposition party. And the coconuts on a placard are the problem?

Ridiculousness over coconuts

For the uninitiated, calling someone a “coconut” is a casual way to suggest that someone who is brown on the outside, is white on the inside. In other words, whilst being brown they are committed to whiteness above all else.

It’s hardly a new term, and documents a social reality that doesn’t often make it into the mainstream.

It’s a complex articulation of racial dynamics and hierarchies. It’s utterly ridiculous that Marieha is being charged with anything, and in fact a testament to the unintelligent level of racial literacy in the country.

Professor Kehinde Andrews explains as much in the following video:

As Andrews says, if you think calling someone a coconut is something to be arrested and charged for:

You’ve lost your damn mind!

Many people rallied outside the magistrates court to show their support for Marieha:

In no time at all, police were even arresting protesters:

Apparently even the coconuts themselves were in for it:

But don’t worry – help is at hand:

Advocacy group CAGE shared more images of arrests:

Five members of CAGE were arrested:

And CAGE took a dim view of this racist government’s claims to freedom of speech:

 

Black Lives Matter summed the whole thing up:

Insult upon insult

As Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu argued, we have the right to hold gatekeepers accountable for their white supremacist work:

The usual characters who love to defend freedom of speech should be up in arms about this. But, they’re not – perhaps because they’re contrarian fuckwits with no real understanding of race, class, and white supremacy.

But, we digress.

It’s an absolute outrage that Marieha was ever arrested, never mind charged, for holding up a satirical placard.

And, for what it’s worth, her message was one that accurately characterised the complex racial dynamics of coconuts like Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman who happily use their skin colour to leverage whatever tokenistic support they can before making decisions that make the lives of Black and Brown people much, much worse.

They’re rich and powerful coconuts, but they are indeed coconuts.

Featured image via Unsplash/Tijana Drndarski, Wikimedia Commons/David Woolfall via CC 3.0, YouTube screenshot/Channel 4 News, resized, and coconuts added to fruit





Source link

Tags: , , ,