Donny Deutsch Didn’t Know “Coconuts” About Marco Rubio And Racial Slurs

Who knew calling someone a “coconut” had a deeper implication than just “you’re crazy?” Certainly not MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch, who managed to get in hot water last night on Joy Behar‘s HLN show when he name-called Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio after the fruit. Which, like several other slang terms can mean someone who acts more “white” than their skin color, and is an issue since Rubio comes from Cuban heritage. Which seems fairly innocent, but in the context of the statement, “Like, you know, this coconut Rubio down in Florida,” you could see how some people might start taking issue with Deutsch’s choice of words.

Several minutes ago Deutsch took to his Twitter, announcing “I said “coconut” meaning simple, goofy, bananas…wasn’t even aware it could be a racially charged word.” But Newsbusters.org dug back over a decade and found another instance when “coconut” was used as an offensive term to describe Henry Bonilla, and Democratic House candidate Victor Morales was forced to publicly apologize.

So, an honest mistake or an inadvertent racial swipe? Either way, we’d be careful about the bananas reference too, Deutsch. Maybe just stay away from all fruit references in the future. And next time, you should probably not wait more than 12 hours before issuing an explanation/apology, even for something as innocuous as this.

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