You’ve Been Bullied About Coconuts: What You Need to Know About Kamala Harris and the Coconut Tree

And just like that, Biden is gone.

To be clear, the POTUS will indeed carry out his usual duties as expected until the end of his term. But when it comes to fighting for a runoff, Biden has heeded weeks of calls for him to step aside, building support for the beginning of a new chapter for current VP Kamala Harris.

In recent weeks, Biden’s post-debate viability heading into the 2024 presidential race has been widely questioned, while Harris has been repeatedly floated as a possible path forward if the party were to move in a different direction. Confirmation of that direction came this weekend, when Biden simultaneously urged other Democrats to throw their respective weight behind Harris.

Amid the Biden speculation in recent weeks, many have also returned to earlier Kamala moments. The oft-cited “coconut tree” metaphor in particular has been striking and proving particularly effective in recent weeks.

Below, we look at how “coconut-pilled” became a byword for Harris’s newfound support.

What did Harris say?

During her speech at the swearing-in ceremony for the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics in May 2023, Harris pointed out something she said her mother liked to say.

“Part of the expansion of the work that you will be doing is, yes, focused on our young leaders and our youth, but understanding that we also have to be clear about the needs of their parents and their grandparents and their teachers and their communities, because none of us live in a silo,” Harris said at the time. “Everything is in context. My mother — she would give us a hard time sometimes and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ You exist in the context of everything that you live in and everything that came before it.”