Trigger warning: use of the anti-racist term “coconut” and “house negro,” both, soon to be judged potentially racist terms (though a precedent has already been set regarding harassment and “coconut” in 2009 when Shirley Brown, a Black woman, and Liberal Democrat Bristol city councilor, was found guilty of racial harassment at Bristol Magistrates’ Court. The case was later overturned when Brown appealed).
Due to the “coconut” trial (12.09.2024) tomorrow (10:00 AM) of Marieha Hassain at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for holding up a Braverman/Sunak “coconut” placard during a Pro-Palestian demonstration last year, we felt it was only right to republish and reiterate what Kehinde Andrews (drawing on Frantz Fanon, a decolonial psychiatrist) has highlighted and underlined in his latest and greatest book, The Psychosis of Whiteness: Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World, about the neurosis of living while Black in a racist world.
Kehinde explores how hatred of our Blackness (likely as a result of the historical, institutional, persistent, and intergenerational racial trauma) from living in a racist world means we can try to negatively adjust (or survive) to racist society, and one of two routes to survival is becoming a “coconut” (and for context, we’ve also included the “gangsta” route).
Some of this he’s already covered in his YouTube video It’s not a crime to call a “coconut” a “coconut”, which led to former GB News host Father Calvin Robinson, a Black man, personally filing a complaint to West Midlands Police for Kehinde calling him a “house negro” in the video. The police (including one Black police officer) later knocked at Kehinde’s door and invited him for a “voluntary” interview or face immediate arrest.
It’s worth reminding, as Guilaine Kinouani (who guested on a Make it Plain podcast episode) tweeted last night that: “A precedent has already been set re: harassment & ‘coconut’. I don’t even understand why this case did not capture the collective imagination, it seems to have been forgotten. Could it be because the defendant — who lost — was a [B]lack woman?”
In 2009, Shirley Brown, the first Black Liberal Democrat elected to Bristol city council, was found guilty of racial harassment for calling an Asian Tory opponent a “coconut.” The punishment was overturned after Brown appealed.
Republished from chapter Black Skin, White Psychosis (pages 180-181) in The Psychosis of Whiteness (2023): Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World.
So profound is the conflict within those wanting to find success in White society that psychiatrist Franz Fanon dedicated his work Black Skin, White Masks (1967) to understanding the phenomenon. He argued that the effects of colonialism were not just physical, but that they were also profoundly cultural and psychological, that training the colonized to believe in White supremacy, would break down their resistance. Fanon explained that “after being a slave to the White man he enslaved himself. The Negro is in every sense of the word a victim of White civilization.”15 We were brainwashed to associate Blackness with immorality and savagery. As Malcolm X put it, White society “taught you how to hate yourself, from the top of the head to the soles of your feet.”16
“We were brainwashed to associate Blackness with immorality and savagery”
For Fanon this hatred of Blackness created a “neurotic orientation” that could be remedied in two different ways. If you accept that the “Black man is the color of the devil” then you lean into the stereotypes, becoming the inhuman terror keeping White people awake at night. On the US plantation, this was the “Bad Nigger,” the hyper-masculine anti-hero who refused to be tamed. Think of the Hustler, Bad Bwoy, Gangsta, Thug, or of how the figure of the “Pimp” is now revered in much of rap culture.17
Psychosis is the only term that explains the celebration of masculinity so toxic it glorifies violence and barbarity against Black men and women. I love hip-hop and grime and am too old for drill, but so many of the lyrics and much of the imagery should come with a health warning. Spend too much time listening to stories of violence, drug dealing, and sleeping with as many women as possible and you might actually come away believing that the “iconic ghetto” really does define Blackness. The defense for the music highlights a much more serious problem: no matter how sordid the lyrics are, they represent a reality for some. Look at the murder rates in Black communities in the US, the Caribbean or even Britain. You are significantly more likely to be killed if you are Black, and it will probably be by a Black person because you are Black. Not in the sense that we are hunting each other in some kind of internal racist sport, but due to the fact that we have dehumanized ourselves to the point where Black life matters less even in our hands.18
My father was a criminal defense solicitor and I will never forget him retelling his conversations with a “Bad Man” from Jamaica. He had come to Britain and behaved as he would have done back home, executing two people on his travels. My father, always the political activist, asked him if he’d ever killed a White man; he couldn’t even comprehend the idea. This is someone who had dropped countless Black bodies but could not even imagine taking a White life. Now, I am not advocating that we go out and take some Whitey scalps, but there is no point trying to dodge the uncomfortable reality that White supremacy has reached into our collective psyche this deeply.
If embracing the dangerous stereotype of Blackness is not to your taste, you can also take an alternative route when trying to embody anti-Blackness. Fanon explains that many have come to the realization that to “order my life like that of a moral man, I simply am not a Negro.”19 This is where the White mask comes in, the rejection of all things perceived to be Black to prove that you are not. I went through this delirium as an eleven-year-old. I knew Blackness was an important part of identity, so I denied that I was Black. I had only White friends, and embraced exclusively White culture, even the desire for White people’s hair (although I’m glad to say this last one was short-lived). It felt like the only way to make sense of myself. If Black was bad but I was good, then I had to be White.
“I went through this delirium as an eleven-year-old… It felt like the only way to make sense of myself. If Black was bad but I was good, then I had to be White”
Like converts to a religion, those who are trying to prove their Whiteness are always the most extreme. You may remember the song “MMMBop,” by the teen boyband Hanson. However, you probably don’t remember that they had an album too, and at my lowest point, I went into a record store and purchased it. My early teen years were not the easiest and I was routinely called names like Bounty Bar and Coconut because both are brown on the outside and white on the inside. I used to hate both of those terms, but they were accurate. I was running away from my Blackness, trying to reach something I had been told was the ideal. My experience was not unique. Institutions remain dominated by Whiteness and there is a pressure to “fit in,” to prove you belong. For many, that means acting what we understand to be White. Importantly, this is not a conscious decision. People do not decide that they are going to abandon their roots. Society conditions us, bleaches us down to the soul. Fanon argued that before the Negritude movement, which embraced a positive conception of Blackness, “the West Indian was a White man” because they had been so fully unmade by White supremacy.20
It is vital that we recognize that there is nothing “White” about doing well at school, listening to certain music (though Hansen might be the exception), living in an area with lots of White people, or having White friends. Not every Black person is brought up in the hood, listening to hip-hop and dodging bullets. As discussed, the “iconic ghetto” is itself part of the psychosis of Whiteness, so we must be careful how we define what is “authentically” Black. At the same time, it is fair to point out self-hatred when we see it. Bleaching your skin is not a lifestyle choice, it is a dangerous result of embracing racist delusions. Similarly, if everything a Black person does is rooted in White culture, then it is right to question whether they have issues with their Blackness. This is nothing do with searching for some kind of cultural purity, but Blackness is a political identity meant to connect us so that we can overcome White supremacy, and we have to acknowledge that there are ways of being that run counter to the interests of Black communities.