Mundine's racist insult

Coconut used in this context is like 'banana' used to insult people of Asian ethnicity who have become full westernised.

You best believe it is a racist term, as anything used as an insult that refers to the colour of a person's skin, is racist.

I've heard the term coconut used by an Aboriginal to insult another Aboriginal before, much like the African American use of 'Uncle Tom' and 'Toby' as stifler mentioned earlier, is used to ostracise and insult any African American that others feel have risen 'above their station' or sold out to whitey.

The term 'coconut' used to describe Islanders is also racist - it's like calling all Arabs terrorists, or all French people frogs (clickit clickit!! )

 

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*******_(pejorative[/url])

C-r-a-c-k-e-r, sometimes white c-r-a-c-k-e-r, is a disparaging and racist term for white people. Originally, it was used to describe poor whites. [url]

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[/url], mainly used in the [url]

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[/url] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States"]

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[/ame], but in recent decades in usage throughout North America.

Etymology

One theory holds that the term comes from the common diet of poor whites. According to the 1911 edition of the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Britannica"]

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[/ame], it is a term of contempt for the "poor" or "mean whites," particularly of Georgia and Florida. Britannica notes that the term dates back to the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution"]

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[/ame], and is derived from the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornmeal"]

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[/ame] which formed their staple food.[url]

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[/url] (In [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English"]

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[/ame] "mean" is also a term for tightfistedness,[url]

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[/url] with no malice implied.)
Another theory is that slaver foremen in the antebellum South used [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip"]

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[/ame] to discipline African slaves, with such use of the whip being described as 'cracking the whip'. In this [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology"]

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[/ame] the white foremen who cracked these whips were thus known as 'c-r-a-c-k-e-r-s'. [url]

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[/url] [url]

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[/url] [url]

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[/url]
An alternate whip-related theory is that the term is linked to early Florida cattle herders ([url]

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[/url]) that traditionally used whips to herd wild Spanish cattle. These cowboys were distinct from the Spanish vaqueros of Florida. The crack of the herders' whips could be heard for great distances when they were used to round cattle in pens and to keep the cows on a given track. Also, "c-r-a-c-k-e-r" has historically been used to refer to those engaged in the low paying job of cracking pecans and other nuts in Georgia and throughout the southeast U.S.
Yet another theory is that the term derives from an [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethan"]

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[/ame] word used to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English"]

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[/ame] word [url]

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[/url] meaning "entertaining conversation" (one may be said to "crack" a joke); this term and the alternate spelling [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic"]

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[/ame] are still in use in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland"]

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[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland"]

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[/ame] and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_England"]

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[/ame]. It is documented in [url]

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[/url] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Death_of_King_John"]

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[/ame] (1595): "What c-r-a-c-k-e-r is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?"

 

Interesting:

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honky[/ame]

Honky (also spelled ****** or honkie) is a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_slur"]

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[/ame] for [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people"]

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[/ame], predominantly heard in the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States"]

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[/ame]. The first recorded use of honky dates to 1946[url]

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[/url], but the exact origins of the word are unknown.
Honky may be a variant of hunky, which was a variant of Bohunk, a slur for Bohemian-Hungarian immigrants[url]

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[/url]. Honky might also derive from the term "honk nopp" which, in the west African language [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolof_language"]

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[/ame] means, literally, "red-eared person" or "white person". The term may have originated with Wolof-speaking slaves brought to the U.S.[url]

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[/url] Another documented [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory"]

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[/ame] and possible explanation for the origins of the word is that [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_male"]

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[/ame] called "johns" would honk their horns for [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution"]

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[/ame] in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area"]

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[/ame] such as [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem"]

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[/ame] and [url]

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[/url] in the early 1900s[url]

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[/url][url]

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[/url][url]

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[/url][url]

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[/url].