Letters to the Times

[mirrorshard]

If you haven't seen this appallingly racist cartoon in the Times, I recommend it for sheer did-they-actually-publish-that value.

Edit: please read the comments before leaving "helpful" corrections. If someone else has already said it, I don't need a "me too". Thank you.

I can't find an address specifically for complaints; comment@thetimes.co.uk gets autorejected. I've sent the following to online.editor@timesonline.co.uk as the apparent next most appropriate thing.



Sir,

I should like to register a complaint about Peter Brookes' cartoon dated 21st March 2009. It clearly depicts Barack Obama as a coconut, which is of course a strong racial slur - a derogatory term meaning "black on the outside, white on the inside".

I am disappointed that a respectable newspaper would publish such slurs, and further disappointed that a respectable newspaper can find nothing better to say about a prominent world leader so soon after his election than to comment on his race.

Yours sincerely,
mirrorshard

Comments

[shuripentu.livejournal.com]

I see a bowling ball too; the holes look very much like holes to me, and not indentations. I didn't see the coconut possibility until I read under the cut, and was wondering if there was some connection between bowling balls and racism that I'd missed.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course it's thoroughly accidental. Strawmen and the BNP aside, nobody ever means to do anything racist.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I'd probably have seen that if I had seen a bowling ball at any point in the last goodness-knows-how-many years, but I have a coconut right here!

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

I think it is a bowling ball, and I think the racist implications are thus accidental.

I also think The Times should be more bloody careful.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

To be fair, they really do look quite similar, shape-wise!

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

It's probably a regional variation. I remember I first heard "coconut" used that way in a poem by Benjamin Zephaniah - "an two cop coconuts". I don't know whether he picked it for the sound, or whether it was the standard term in his community at the time.

[cjwatson]

And that's a reason to excoriate rather than educate?

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

The complaints address is a fairly standard way to educate.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with that cartoon is that the cartoonist and editor clearly haven't thought very hard about it, or they'd have gone "hang on, erk, that looks like it could be a coconut, yikes, let's do something different..."

I very much disagree. I think of myself as a relatively well-educated person, and I *think* I've heard the term 'coconut' as a synonym for 'Oreo' or 'Bounty Bar', but I stared at it for ages trying very hard to work out why it was racist before clicking on the lj-cut and couldn't figure it out. And *I* already knew that one person considered it "appallingly" racist.

[cjwatson]

Your letter is an excoriation, and one that makes it clear you had no idea what the cartoonist was going on about. Not perhaps the most effective approach to education.

[hellison.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a bowling ball too, after his very stupid comment on some show or other about how is bowling is like 'something from the special olympics', and that was why the 'doh' as well...

[psych0naut.livejournal.com]

Before reading your cut and the comments, I must confess I had no idea what was (inferred to be) so racist about this cartoon. It seemed pretty obvious to me that it was a reference to the President's bowling joke. However, even if he were depicted as a coconut, and if that depiction were meant to convey "black on the outside, white on the inside", I still don't see how that qualifies as racist. There are lots of people who don't conform to ethnic stereotypes, or who adopt lifestyles and mannerisms of a particular ethnic group, and I don't see any problem with making reference to this (unless it's done to ridicule or otherwise deride the practice). I know several asiaphiles who jokingly refer to themselves as "eggs" ("white on the outside, yellow on the inside"), and also some people of Chinese descent who use similar metaphors to indicate (neutrally or jocularly, but never pejoratively) that they've assimilated into Western culture.

I think you're reading way too much into this cartoon. Are you sure you aren't just looking for an excuse to be offended?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

"Coconut", "bounty bar", "oreo" and the like have a history of derogatory use, so I think they're better avoided, especially by white people.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure. I'm feeling spiky in any case today, but that would have set me off even without that.

The "coconut" thing ties into issues of cultural abandonment, marginalization, invisibility, and all the painful so-you-think-you're-too-good-for-us stuff.

Cultures are very much not symmetrical - it's one thing to move from a culturally dominant system to a less-dominant one, but quite another to do it the other way around. (There's also the issue of safe-for-white-people, not-safe-for-others.)

It can be very much an "I can use any word I want, but what the hell did you just call me, PAL?" issue too.

[hungry-pixel.livejournal.com]

I bow to your superior coconutty knowledge :-) I confess I only ever spare the hairy things a cursory glance in the supermarket.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Homer bowls! Like, lots. Also It's "doh, I screwed up" since the Bowling Story is about Obama making a nasty abelist remark.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

There's actually a really good, simple way to turn them into delicious coconutty food.

Throw the damn thing away and open a tin of coconut milk instead.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Ah, that'd explain it. I suppose it's a standard sport given his socioeconomic status.

(I mostly just watch the Simpsons for Lisa.)

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my dear, that was overly harsh of me.

I actually hadn't been aware of coconut used in the Oreo/bounty bar sort of way at all. I just tend to assume that using tropical fruit as an image when portraying someone of colour is a Really Bad Idea (cf. Boris Johnson and "watermelon smiles"). And also tend to assume that most other sensible people see it as such as well.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

As I say above, I hadn't heard it as a synonym for "Oreo" or "Bounty Bar" at all. I just tend to assume that using tropical fruit as an image when portraying someone of colour is a Really Bad Idea (cf. Boris Johnson and "watermelon smiles"). And also tend to assume that most other sensible people see it as such as well.

Of course, I'm fairly sure that all of us here discussing the matter on Sam's LJ are white (as I assume are at least most of the people on emperor's IRC channel). I'd be very interested to see what people thought of the matter on debunkingwhite or racism_101.

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Does it have a lime in it?

[purplepiano.livejournal.com]

Apart from any racial overtone, I think that cartoon's just a bit rubbish! Not very funny, a bit obscure and doesn't make any sort of serious point. Though I often find political cartoons smug and annoying anyway. I guess Obama is still at the un-satirisable stage.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I just tend to assume that using tropical fruit as an image when portraying someone of colour is a Really Bad Idea

Definitely. But knowing that 'coconut' had a specific meaning might make people more likely to see a coconut in the cartoon rather than a bowling ball.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

ok so i'm not actively discussing, but i'm paying attention to the discussion and i'm not white.
.. and the coloured-on-the-outside-white-on-the-inside thing is something i've been subjected to. No, it's not nice, but i do feel there's a big difference between that sort of racism - a nuanced sort, if you like, and the absolute sort - absolute supremacy, the categorical devaluation of other races etc.
Most fish in different seas will at some point wonder about how much their identity has shifted or how they are perceived relative to their ancestral and contextual culture, but most don't think they're inferior to some other race, unless something has gone badly wrong. Coconut, banana, oreo... it's about identity and belonging and which 'culture' is considered better. It's actually pretty interesting, although of course when used as a racial slur it's unpleasant and damaging. Oh. i just realised something. I think the distinction (to me) is between a racial thing and a cultural thing with racial aspects. possibly.

ETA: Also, for what it's worth, i don't see a coconut, i see a bowling ball (without knowing the relevant story). It's stretching it to see a coconut, even with familiarity of old cartoons which do show coconut-heads.
Anyway, i'm not actually discussing anything here, right, you haven't seen me...

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

sorry me again. i don't normally comment in here cos it's not my space nor my people and you don't know me from adam and i'm wary of barging in. might've done just that... i didn't mean it to come across that way.
Carry on.