Black British councillor could face jail after calling Asian opponent a 'coconut' during budget debate

We read:

"A black councillor who called an Asian colleague a ‘coconut’ during a meeting is facing a possible prison sentence after being charged with racially aggravated harassment. Liberal Democrat Shirley Brown, 47, used the term to describe Jay Jethwa at a Bristol City Council budget debate last year. The jibe is used to accuse someone of betraying their native culture and pandering to 'white' opinion - as the coconut is brown on the outside and white in the middle.

Conservative Mrs Jethwa, 41, said she had not experienced such a severe insult since she came to the UK from India 24 years ago. Mrs Brown used the term after Councillor Jethwa championed a Tory motion to cut funding for the Legacy Commission, which commemorates the abolition of slavery.

The incident on February 24 plunged the council into a race row and prompted a formal complaint by the Conservative Party to the council's head of legal services. In July last year, Mrs Brown was suspended for a month by the council's Standards Committee for using ‘offensive and abusive language’.

But this was overturned on appeal by the Adjudication Panel for England Tribunal Service in September and Mrs Brown remains in her post pending the outcome of her appeal. Avon and Somerset police began investigating the incident in March 2009 and Mrs Brown has now been summonsed to appear before Bristol Magistrates Court on February 15. If the case goes to crown court, the maximum sentence is two years in jail.

Mrs Brown insists the comment was not racist and says it was intended to mean that Mrs Jethwa was ‘in denial of her roots’.

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It is a sad day when it is considered insulting to say that someone has values regarded as characteristic of whites.