Warwick Sanctuary - Heating the Coconut

The word "coconut" is used as a mild derogatory slang word referring to a person of Latino, Filipino, or Indian subcontinent descent who emulates a white person (brown on the outside, white on the inside).

When even Wikipedia, that bastion of hastily assorted knowledge, picks up on a cultural in-joke around since the 80s, one wonders why there seems to be so little comment on the subject.

I have never heard either term applied to anyone other than someone of British Asian descent but, being a Coconut, clearly I don’t hang around with enough Latino and Filipino students. Warwick is full of coconuts. We’re everywhere. We scorned London, Leicester and Coventry for being too Indian. We’re a little intimidated by Cambridge, and we’ve learnt to accept that goddammit, there are no decent curry houses in Leamington Spa. We go to Millennium Balti, with its endearing Eurotrash music, in the knowledge that it’s like a scene from Goodness Gracious Me and eye the waiters with a mixture of sympathy and scorn. We even think up Westernized nicknames for ourselves for our caucasion fellows apparently incapable of coping with polysyllables (viz: ‘Dave’ for Devanand, ‘Dippy’ for Dipankar, and my own personal favourite, ‘Dan’ for Dhananjay).

Rather cruelly, we shun the company of Indian soc; a society chiefly run by what we snootily term freshies. Wikipedia again comes to my rescue: The term is commonly used when immigrants from a foreign nation have not yet assimilated the host nation's culture, language, and behaviour. [They] tend to be identified by their fashion, social preferences, behaviour towards others, and — perhaps most commonly and distinctively — their accents.

Yes, to say the least. Goodness Gracious Me picked up on and hyperbolised the ridiculous habits of our parents, instilling us second generation coconuts with the fear of becoming anything like them. What simple, harmless entertainment it is to imitate the Bombay accent and paint it as an indication of stupidity. Unfortunately, we rather shot ourselves in the foot by portraying ourselves and our parents in this fashion to the Western side of the world, because it results in arrant tripe like Bride and Prejudice. Oh dear God. No one really dances around in synchronisation at Indian weddings in belly-revealing outfits. The less said about Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood Dreams, the better.

In spite of this, there is one event – hosted by our Union – which does much to combine these two breeds at Warwick. It is called Heat and takes place on arbitrary Fridays. Laughingly, it describes itself an ‘international’ music event. Lies. I’ve never heard them play anything but bhangra past 11 o’ clock. Whatever the coconuts might pretend, a very small bit of them longs to be part of that noisy melee of Asian people smoking sheesha. Thus they sidle along to Heat, hidden under a hat, cast off their skinny jeans and admit that they know the words to every song from Dil Se. Albeit in a horrendous accent. So lost are the coconuts in their pretence that they perpetrate their own clichés. Indiansoc ought to set up a charity: Heating the Coconut – helping coconuts become a little browner on the inside. All donations to be given in rupees.