What do you think of when you hear the words “racially aggravated public order offence”? Someone being called the N-word or P-word, perhaps? An innocent person being threatened with violence or abuse? Are there images forming in your mind of angry, menacing perpetrators? These are reasonable assumptions. But I would wager that your mental catalogue does not include the figure of a smiling brown woman holding up a placard depicting a coconut tree, with pictures of Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman pasted on it. That woman is Marieha Hussain. Last week, she was in a magistrates court, charged after a picture of her placard at a pro-Palestine march last year was circulated on social media. Individuals and organisations mobilised online and outside the central London court in support of Hussain, and a collective of south Asian diaspora organisations released a statement calling for the “politicised” charges to be dropped. In his defence of Hussain, Rajiv Menon KC argued that the placard was a “political criticism” of Braverman, who “was promoting in different ways a racist political agenda, as evidenced by the Rwanda policy, the racist rhetoric she was using around small boats”, and Rishi Sunak was “either acquiescing to it or being inactive”. Now, you might disagree with that view of Braverman and Sunak, and you might think that even if that opinion of them were accurate, that it’s not very nice to go around calling people coconuts (I know I wouldn’t). But believing that Hussain’s actions met the threshold for legal action is a stretch. She was acquitted on Friday, but the fact that she ended up in court tells us something about the way the concerns and realities of racism have been skewed, and the overzealous policing environment that dominates in this country. The term “coconut” broadly refers to someone who is from a non-white ethnic minority background, but behaves in ways that are considered to be white. It is applied to anything from musical preferences to political positions. As a casual judgment, it can be obnoxious and hurtful, implying that there is only a certain way people are allowed to be. Ethnic minorities are not homogenous and enjoy the same freedom as white people to adopt cultural tastes or politics simply based on personal preference. But used in the specific political context on Hussain’s placard, the term reaches for something meaningful about how a cohort of powerful rightwing brown and black politicians have conducted themselves in high office. These figures are criticised for their collusion against other people of colour, in which the credibility bestowed upon them by their own racial backgrounds is used to legitimise policies that harm ethnic minorities and discredit their complaints. What Kemi Badenoch, Sunak, Braverman and Priti Patel all share is that, at various points in their careers, they have drawn on their own backgrounds as racial representatives, but only in the service of promoting a single narrative: that Britain doesn’t need any more anti-racist politics. This is despite the fact that structural racism, clear in the workings of the Home Office,the Windrush scandal, unequal policing, and health and mortality outcomes among black and ethnic minority communities, still persists. Not to mention the sort of direct, non-structural racism that seems only to be taken seriously when it spills out on to the streets. These politicians are, of course, free to do what they like with their racial capital. But those who disagree with them are also allowed to point out and criticise their actions in their own satirical language. Criminalising such expression as racist is simply a category error. It shows us the blanket notion of equality before the law clashing with reality, with the inequality of life for many in the country and their frustration at how their experiences are erased by a powerful few who claim to represent them in politics. Hussain was not targeting a specific racial group, she was making a specific point about two politicians. Part of the reason why the conversation around terms such as this has become charged is that it has come to symbolise a clash between internal ethnic minority community norms and external ones. Between those who might have been offended by the placard and those who just saw a joke making a familiar political point. The prosecutor said the term “coconut” was a “well-known racial slur which has a very clear meaning”. But the question is, to who? And more importantly, who gets to determine which one wins out? It’s a question that is difficult to pose and answer in a particularly crude and febrile time in terms of public discourse about race. Hussain’s case unfolded in the shadow of a Conservative government that presided over a backsliding in racial progress. In the Sewell report, it threw all its heft behind denying structural racism. It published guidance that said movements for racial equality such as Black Lives Matter were “partisan” and, therefore, should not be “promoted” in classrooms. And it picked high-profile fights over race, such as the one with the England team over their stance on racial equality. We are still reaping the harvest of those years in our political and intellectual landscape – one in which there is still no self-reflection on behalf of the Tories or wider attempt to reverse the damage, and where a woman holding a satirical sign goes through hell and humiliation. It is also important to see what happened to Hussain in the context of the wider legislative backdrop in which, behind the guise of protecting public order, the law has narrowed the scope for political dissent with draconian, and as with Hussain’s case, farcical consequences. Giving the police more powers, cracking down on peaceful protests and imposing lengthy sentences have become the norm. This should be a worry for us all. To this hammer of a legal system, every placard is a nail. Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist