The ‘Coconut’ Hate Crime

‘Coconut’ is “used as slang to describe someone who is believed to be betraying their ethnic roots by pandering to white opinion – referring to a coconut being brown on the outside but white on the inside.”

By Jeff Goodall

How utterly charming.

A “Black” woman in Bristol, England, calls an “Asian” woman a “coconut” in a moment of frustration, and later finds herself branded as a ‘convicted racist’ under The Public Order Act, with her much-vaunted ‘volunteer’ career, culminating in a seat on the local Council, lying around her in ruins.

“The police investigation involved no fewer than four officers from the specialist hate crime unit. Her trial lasted three days. It came after a council inquiry and another by an independent appeals panel that took 15 months and cost tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money.”

Reading this ridiculously sympathetic story, one would think that this sweet, innocent Black woman, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants to Britain and an ordained Pentecostal Minister yet, was the sainted victim of a drive-by smear-job; “I’m devastated that after all my hard work for the community I’ve got a criminal record for racism.”

continue…

2011-06-17