In Walters v Avanta Enterprise Ltd, W is black Caribbean. W alleged that her manager, C, threw some chocolates at her team and had jokingly suggested that she had chosen the chocolates for everyone’s personalities. C threw W a Bounty bar saying, “I wasn’t trying to say you’re a coconut”, i.e. a black person who is perceived to be behaving like a white person (black on the outside and white on the inside). W was then placed on a performance improvement plan which was triggered by her not hitting her key performance indicators. W alleged that C was attempting to put all people who she believed to be ‘coconuts’ at a disadvantage. An ET held that the complaint of direct race discrimination would be struck out, because there is no white comparator. The EAT upheld W’s appeal. The ET erred as it should have considered how a hypothetical white comparator who behaved as a white person is expected to behave, and who similarly was not achieving their targets, would have been treated.

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