From a man being taken to court for posting a raccoon picture on social media to a British-Asian woman being charged after holding a placard depicting ministers as coconuts, concerns are mounting about how criticising politicians can land Black and Asian people with criminal records.
Increasingly, emojis and memes are being used as a form of political criticism, in these cases to call out members of an ethnic minority who are perceived as pandering to white supremacy. But a number of people have been investigated by the police as a result of using terms such as “coconut”, “c**n” and “tap-dancer” to criticise public figures who share the same ethnicity.
