Britain’s totalitarian anti-discrimination regime turns on one of its own

The Mail’s headline is chilling:

The ‘coconut’ hate crime investigation that shows NOBODY can escape Britain’s Thought Police

We learn in the article that Shirley Brown, a black long time activist and councillor in Bristol, England, in a heated moment during a debate two years ago, called another councillor, an immigrant from India, a “coconut” for not supporting a project to atone for Bristol’s historic role in the slave trade. Brown very quickly apologized for the remark, but that didn’t end the affair. The police, seeking to demonstrate that they enforced the hate-speech laws equally against everyone, pursued a 15 month investigation, culminating in a three day trial of Brown for incitement of racial hatred:

Last July, after being found guilty, she was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £620 costs. ‘I was devastated by the verdict but I wasn’t surprised,’ she says. ‘I had the feeling the judge wanted to make an example of me.

‘Appearing in court was the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. Before that, I’d kept telling myself that surely it would be dropped, but in court it hit me that it was real—I was really being accused of being a racist. When the verdict came, it was official. The feelings of sadness and shame and humiliation overwhelmed me.’

Brown continues:

“It was a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes though, and I feel the price I’ve paid for mine has been too great. I’ve been publicly humiliated and my reputation has been ruined. I’m devastated that after all my hard work for the community I’ve got a criminal record for racism.

“When I think of all the time and money spent on my case, which could have been spent elsewhere, I just feel so sad. I’ve always been proud to be British but I feel that something has gone very wrong in this country when political correctness comes ahead of basic common sense.”

In the usual manner of conservatives and many liberals in modern society, Brown blames “political correctness” for taking the anti-hate law too far and subjecting her to such an ordeal, but she doesn’t question the anti-hate law itself. She doesn’t suggest on what principled basis a law criminalizing the “incitement of racial hatred and discrimination” would only punish the people she wants to be punished and not punish her. She doesn’t say why “using threatening, abusive or insulting words, with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress ” [emphasis added], the act of which she was found guilty, ought to be a criminal offense when white men do it, but not when she does it.

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Mark Jaws writes:

So, what we have here is a black “British” woman calling an Indian living in Britain a “coconut” for being a South Asian version of an Uncle Tom, brown on the outside but white on the inside. Good, I am glad she is being fried. This evening I will drink a glass of Schadenfreude to go along with my “Weiner Schnitzel.”

However, the BIG QUESTION is whether the full weight of the British “justice” system would have been equally applied had she labeled a white man a “snowball” or a “marshmallow” for being white on the outside and white on the inside.

LA replies:

Exactly. I’m glad you raised this point. Shirley Brown found herself under the gun because the woman she insulted, Jay Jethwa, is an Indian (or an Asian as they say in Britain). Even though Brown quickly apologized for the remark, Jethwa evidently did not accept the apology, but complained to the police, and as she was a nonwhite person complaining about a “racist” remark against herself, the police had to take it seriously.

Would the police have pursued the case in the same way if Brown had racially insulted a white man? Hah.

James P. writes:

Just look at the picture of Shirley Brown’s “victim” Jay Jethwa—a grim enforcer of multi-culti orthodoxy if ever there was one! [LA replies: Indeed, so grim and orthodox that she wouldn’t accept Brown’s evidently sincere apology, but pressed criminal charges against her for the single word “coconut.”]

The article quotes Shirley Brown as saying:

“It was a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes though, and I feel the price I’ve paid for mine has been too great. I’ve been publicly humiliated and my reputation has been ruined. I’m devastated that after all my hard work for the community I’ve got a criminal record for racism.”

So wait, the person who demanded 750,000 pounds of taxpayers’ money “to atone for Bristol’s historic role in the slave trade” wants forgiveness for past mistakes? How come the white people of Bristol don’t get forgiveness for past mistakes, especially for mistakes committed centuries ago, that nobody alive today had anything to do with? How come the white people of Bristol don’t get any credit for Britain abolishing the slave trade?

Would Brown think public humiliation, ruined reputation, and a criminal record was too high a price to inflict on a white racist? Would she think that a lengthy police investigation, a trial, and a council inquiry “that took 15 months and cost tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money” would be “silly” and excessive if the perpetrator were a white racist? To ask these questions is to answer them.

Shirley also said:

“Of course I shouldn’t have used that word, but to me it meant that she was denying her cultural roots, rather than anything racial. It wasn’t about the colour of her skin, or about her behaving in a white way.”

Gosh, seems like her trial and punishment hasn’t taught her not to use racial stereotypes like “behaving in a white way”!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 13, 2011 09:02 AM | Send