CW: references to grooming, usage of expletives and racial slurs

I remember when I first saw someone like me sitting in Cabinet. It was Sajid Javid, a British-Pakistani man who, like me, was born in Rochdale. Despite the fact that I vehemently disagreed with his political views, I felt proud to know that there was someone like me in a position of power – feeling like I was represented mattered to me. I remember even more distinctly the not too recent memory of seeing Rishi Sunak come to power. Another momentous occasion for British-Asians. It felt even more special to me knowing that Sunak, like me, had heritage in East Africa, with his parents, like my mother, being born there. Both occasions felt like progress.

Yet whatever feelings of pride I have about Sunak and the diversity of his Cabinet have become easily drowned out by feelings of anger and frustration. Setting aside the horrific policies towards migrants and refugees that the past Home secretaries, both of whom looked like me, have instituted, the current government’s rhetoric in rolling out its new clampdown on grooming gangs has made me nothing short of furious. I want to be clear; policies that stop children being predated upon ought to be lauded. That being said, presentation matters. The way we represent things is never merely descriptive. They inevitably have an effect on the world. 

Sunak and Braverman continue to claim that their policies are aimed at targeting groups of British-Pakistani men who groomed white women. Yet the data clearly shows that British-Pakistani men are not overrepresented in the statistics. It’s not my intention to break down the statistics in this rebuttal of their claim here. People interested in that can research the statistics for themselves. Nor is it my intention to question the narrative that grooming gangs were not stopped due to police officers afraid of being called racist. It’s unclear whether police failed to live up to their responsibilities due to fears of being called racist, or due to a perception of working class women as a problem rather than victims. Or indeed some other reason they failed to live up to their duties. However, what is clear is that the police failed these women at an institutional level. My aim here is to shine a light on what effects the rhetoric Braverman and Sunak deployed over their policy will have. 

It’s easy to see why they are using this sort of rhetoric. Braverman and Sunak, for all their faults, aren’t stupid. Their rhetoric is a move in the ever escalating culture war that pervades Western politics. It is a way to get brownie-points from voters with whom their rhetoric resonates. That’s the effect they want.

I suspect that  many British-Asians (both Indian and Pakistanis) as well as other minorities in the UK will be able to see clearly past the sophist bullshittery of their remarks – using rhetoric as a way to rile up their base. However, I’m not particularly worried about what ethnic minorities will think of their rhetoric, at least not directly anyway. It’s British white people and the implicit or explicit conceptions they will form about British-Pakistanis that worry me – people who will associate British-Pakistanis with paedophilia, rapists, and groomers. This, in turn, will have an indirect effect on brown people. This is the effect their rhetoric will have – feeding into racist stereotypes of men of colour, men who look like me, as rapists, as dirty, as ‘other’.

I come from Rochdale. Growing up, I was continuously associated by white people at school with the only representation of British-Pakistanis they saw in the media. Brown people who were either part of the horrific grooming gangs like the ones in Rochdale and Rotherham or some terrorist organisation. Being called “Paedo” and “terrorist” by white peers at school, some of whom go to this university, was almost a daily occurrence. These were racist remarks I didn’t have the conceptual tools to reckon with. What could I say in response? After all, weren’t they right? I looked like those people on the news, and the news told me they were groomers and terrorists. I had brown skin, black hair, and a beard. So did they. I remember I started to internalise these racist remarks. I started to look at Pakistani men around my hometown in the same way. I viewed them the same way I viewed myself. They, like me, were dirty and ‘other’. 

It’s these thoughts, these feelings of being othered whilst at school and growing up that fed into my own feelings of low self-worth – feelings of undesirability. Feelings I still struggle with. Feelings I’m sure I will continue to struggle with for sometime. This is why the recent comments by politicians who look like me sting so much. If Boris Johnson had said it, it would have still been unacceptable, but it would have also been somewhat expected. How much can I expect Boris, like my white peers at school, to know about the psychological effects their representations of me, as an other, would have on me? There is some degree of denial from white people – what philosopher Charles Mills coined as ‘white ignorance’. 

The same cannot be said for Braverman and Sunak. Both of them are British-Asians. I’m fairly confident either they, or certainly people they know, have been racially discriminated against – called the slur ‘Pakis’ or some other distinctively British pejorative slur about brown people (e.g. ‘curry-muncher’). They know words are not merely descriptive, they matter. They can hurt, directly, via slurs, or indirectly, via racialised stereotypes. They know their words can have an internalising effect. I doubt this is the effect that they, as British-Asians, would like, but it is the effect their words will have.

Another racialised slur I heard thrown about by other brown, not white, people was that of being a ‘coconut’. For those out of the loop, this refers to those who are not white, but ‘act’ white. Its something people from my hometown call me when they know I go to Oxford and sound nothing like them. My relationship with this term is far more complex than racial slurs like ‘Paki’ . On the one hand, it does seem deplorable to call someone a ‘coconut’ simply because they want to be educated and identify with some aspects of British culture. Indeed, this is something which brown Conservative politicians like Sajid Javid have acknowledged. 

On the other hand, however, there is something distinctively awful about throwing people of colour who look like you under the bus. In other words, doing the very thing Sunak and Braverman are doing to curry favour with their white voter base. Is it permissible to call them ‘coconuts’ in this circumstance? Perhaps it is. They are doing something morally abhorrent and ‘coconut’ seems like a fitting description. They are using the tools of the ‘master’ to oppress others like them. However, perhaps it is impermissible. Perhaps it is wrong to claim that there is something wrong about acting white. Again, I am not sure how morally correct the use of the term ‘coconut’ is.

From a sheer practical point, I think it is probably a term we ought to avoid using. Calling Sunak and Braverman ‘coconuts’ seems like a sure-fire way to equip them with leverage to claim they are being discriminated against. By claiming to be victims they would in effect be gaslighting the people against whom their racist rhetoric is discriminating. These claims of victimhood are also very likely to resonate with their white voter base, who will see the pejorative use of ‘coconut’ as implying that there is something wrong with being white. Whilst I have no doubt that some people of colour do use the term in that way – to denote something wrong with being white – I suspect few people actually mean that when they use the term. For one thing, there is no language police on the way we use words. Think about ‘race’ and its usage. It’s used in a whole variety of different ways and there does not seem to be one usage that is always right. The term ‘coconut’, like I already mentioned, has been used against me because I don’t exactly reflect the homogeneity of other British-Pakistanis in my community. Some people use ‘coconut’ to refer to the fact they perceive others as not being authentic to their heritage. However, I also think we could (although again I am keen to stress the point that I am unsure, pragmatically speaking, whether we should) use ‘coconut’ to refer to someone discriminating against other people of colour, employing racist rhetoric and tactics that white people typically use, to serve their own interests. Regardless, we should avoid using that term to prevent politicians of colour from feigning victimhood when they throw other communities of colour under the bus.

How else should we respond when politicians act in the way that Sunak and Braverman have acted? Apart from, responding to them publicly, I’m not sure what else can be done by people like me. White allies, can, however, stand up and not be afraid of being called racist themselves. They can call out the rhetoric Sunak and Braverman put out there for what it is. Racist dribble and dog-whistles. Of course, before they can do this, they, white people, like my peers from school, need to dig deep within themselves and root out any preconceived notions of British-Pakistanis as ‘other’, as dirty, as rapists, as paedophiles. I am sure this will not be easy, given how much the media has portrayed the British Pakistani community as such. However, my hope, in writing this piece is that it will lead some white people to root out the implicit and explicit bias they have towards British-Pakistani men.

[Sunak and Braverman] Image Credit: UK Government / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons