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

[angoel.livejournal.com]

I looked at it and thought 'bowling ball'. And, for that matter, am not entirely sure why a coconut is considered racist.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

It's black on the outside and white on the inside, just like a bounty bar.

The equivalent for the Chinese is "banana".

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

for that matter, am not entirely sure why a coconut is considered racist.

*blinks* Seriously?

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I'd never heard "coconut" as a racist term. Oreo yes, coconut no.

[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.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard it either.

[emperor]

The Beeb discusses the term.

[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.