Juan Williams is a Coconut

Growing up, I was taunted and traumatized by words like coconut and Oreo. For those not in the know, calling someone coconut (or Oreo or pineapple or apple) is a way that brown, black, and red folks often respond to other brown, black and red folks that, in their opinion, "act white." The connotation is that a coconut (which I keep writing as cocunt....which is a vagina shared by Siamese twins) is an individual that is brown or black on the outside and white on the inside. --(Asian kids that acted white were pineapples, Native kids that acted white were apples--most likely Macintosh as I don't know many Green indigenous folks so Granny Smith just wouldn't work in the same way, and if someone called me Honey Crisp I would probably have been delighted and gave him a kiss).

Now for most of us that grew up being called one of these variation, the experience was traumatizing and the impetus for the taunting had little to do with us "acting white." It had everything to do with the the anti-intellectualism that has been ingrained in many of our communities, so, for example, when my Mother moved us from Duluth, MN to a black neighborhood in Kansas City, MO, my brother and I were attacked as "coconuts and Oreos," because of our northern English (we were also called "proper," by kids in the hood...which would make me cry)--and also because of the fact that the reading book that I had in 2nd grade was the one that they were using in the 5th grade in Missouri. There are many things I love dearly about the South but the public education system is not one of them. Attitudes toward education in many working class and poor people of color neighborhoods are forgivable as inherited relics of Jim Crow and slavery. Just like many relics, though, the reverence for perception versus the honoring of truth causes all kinds of fucked up situations. Someone pass me an Oreo, I need some comfort food.

Today, however, despite my own experience with being labeled a coconut, after reading an article on the Huffington Post concerning former NPR commentator Juan Williams (who was fired from NPR) making a statement in an Op-Ed for The Hill newspaper calling for the defunding of NPR, I posted the article on Facebook and in my comments on the article I referred to Juan Williams as a coconut. I would like to revise and extend my remarks.

My old high school pal Lara Christley sent me an email asking me if I meant that Juan was brown on the outside, white on the inside. I realized when I got her email that I did mean exactly that but, at the same time, not exactly that at all. What I really meant to say is that Juan Williams is brown on the outside and Republican on the inside. The fact that I conflated whiteness with Republicanism, for me, is one dimensional and problematic in that I know fierce fierce fierce white folks that want not a damn thing to do with Republican politics or the fucked up legacy of ultra conservatism in this country. Yet, while examining my use of the word, I found that I was still comfortable with my word choice.

Ain't that a contradiction.

In my mind, and this I stand behind, Republicans and Republican values AS THEY EXIST TODAY, are what have and continue to drive us directly towards our own doom. Those values and the policies that they have spawned have almost exclusively been championed by white folks and have only been implemented by white folks in power. There has not now nor ever been a majority people of color in any state or federal legislature, and never has there been a critical number of people of color in any of the decision making bodies of the Republican Party or in the various right wing think tanks that have developed the pro-military, anti-choice, anti-democracy, pro-business, anti-working folks, racist, heterosexist, hateful policies that have largely dictated the direction of this country since 1981.

There have been idiotic brown folks that have somehow been so self-hating that they have happily drunk the GOP and fundamentalist Christian Kool-Aid and taken up causes and values that are antithetical to their own well being, insults to their ancestors, and deadly to their progeny, but thank God those crazies have rarely had a national platform to spout their idiocy and give the GOP "examples" of the diversity that they claim exists under their "big tent." Juan Williams, though, does have a national platform and has used it in a way that betrays his own history and throws his own (our) community under the bus....then happily backs up over it.

I am not having it.

I wish there was another word that I had at hand that could communicate my complete and utter disgust with Juan Williams, his statement, and his politics. I wish the word that I chose and used did not lump all white folks into a monolith and perhaps communicate the idea that I believe that all white folks are evil. I obviously do not...I, unlike Juan Williams, am not self hating. If my own Mother was any whiter, you would be able to see the sunlight reflecting off of her skin in deep space. But I can not, will not, and shall not tolerate any person of color that willfully turns his or her back on her community for personal gain. And in the grand lexicon of the people of color experience I can think of no word or phrase, no form of condemnation, and no manner of rejection that is more direct or more final than labeling an individual one of those words that I once so despised (and still do when used against a child whose only sin is that he or she has managed to achieve some level of education in a country and educational system specifically designed to assist them in failing) when hurled at me while playing double dutch.

As a child, the worst insult you could hurl at another black person was coconut. Today, I am making a decision to revive that word but with a new meaning. NO LONGER does coconut mean a black or brown person that "acts white." A coconut is an individual so fucked up and so willing to dismantle the very few (and let's be real, when talking about NPR, very flawed) vehicles for communication and democracy that have not been completely corrupted by corporate America that he or she is willing to walk away from justice and into the arms of the same people that would happily string their ass up, light them on fire and have lunch...if only it were still legal to do so.

In Juan Williams' case...if you crack his ass open....you won't find white skin....you will find Fox News and Rupert's Murdoch's Bitch stamped in place of his spine.

The Blacks Are Coming! The Blacks Are Coming!

Lord have mercy I can't stand Republicans. I don't hate who they are. I hate what they do. Love the Republicans, hate the Republicanism. Whatever, fuck 'em.

A good friend of mine wrote recently that we need to be partisan. Hell fucking yeah. I am partisan as hell. And the root of partisan is party...and I'll be damned if any Republicans are invited to mine. I am going to have a big ass black dyke hippy draft dodging Communist feminist Wiccan abortion doctor recovering addict as the bouncer at the door with a loaded double barrelled shot gun and Black Panther tendencies.

I heard the dumbest thing I believe I have EVER heard on the radio today:

“Blacks, blacks, blacks. The blacks are everywhere. The blacks are being promoted. I am being discriminated against because I am white.” So spoke a woman from Oklahoma interviewed by BBC America about Barack Obama and his first 100 days in office.

I love BBC America...if there is a wignut Fox news Rupert Murdoch blowin' bleach blonde former beauty queen turned pundit out in the wilds of the rural West, they will find her...put her on the radio...and giggle.

Now, pardon my French lovin' ass, but, with African-Americans making up 12% of the U.S. population how the hell are we “everywhere?” Yesterday, a story came out saying that college educated blacks are being laid off at TWICE the rate of blacks without a college degree. So where the hell are we getting promoted? Popeye's Chicken? Shit.

Has this lovely woman in Oklahoma taken a gander at Obama's cabinet? There are more women/white women up in there than there has ever been in any administration ever. I mean come on Janet Napolitano, Katherine Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton, and I am sure I am missing a few.

And, for the record, back in 1921 the good people of Tulsa, OK rioted and burned to the ground what was called the Negro Wall Street (Greenwood District). They segregated black folks, only allowed them to live within a 35 block radius, refused to let them shop, eat, or go to school with the white folks, had the dubious honor of being the only city in America with segregated telephone booths, and then got pissed the fuck off when black folks spent their money on each other and ended up developing a community that rivaled any white community in the state for education and elegance. So what did they do? They burned the entire damn district to the ground. They shot women and children. They shot and let bleed to death a noted black surgeon that the FUCKING MAYO BROTHERS (you know...Mayo Clinic...best hospital in America) said was the best black surgeon walking the planet. And this heifer is going to have the nerve to get the hell up on the radio and suggest that she was being discriminated against?

Sweet Jesus.....OOOOOOOOOHHHHH SWEET JESUS!

And the Right in this country wonders why it got its ASS handed to them in the last election. They wonder why their own pundits are saying that the GOP has become irrelevant and is falling apart around them. They wonder why the hell Arlen Spectre would jump ship after 30 years as a Republican. Here's the answer, listen closely: YOUR BASE IS A BUNCH OF RACIST LOONIES SPOUTING SHIT IN PUBLIC THAT MAKES THEIR OWN MAMAS PRETEND AS IF THEY DON'T KNOW WHO THE HELL THEY ARE.

In the end, I know that this was just shooting off at the mouth by one stupid woman. Unfortunately, I know that her ignorance represents what a segment (and probably a large one) of poor, working class, white folks believe. It's not the fault of the average every day working white person that they may believe this. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of sensationalist radio personalities like this random white woman from Oklahoma who gets on the radio, makes fucked up statements like the one she made. In the end, when the James Byrd style lynchings happen, when black kids are beaten in school, and when black churches are burned to the ground it is the black community that pays the price for one woman's insipid ignorance.