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Taking the prize in the indignation derby was British Muslim activist Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation. "I am deeply shocked and saddened at Prince Harry's racism which upsets and offends many British Asians," Shafiq said in a statement. "The use of this sort of racism has no justification and I am saddened by those that are advocating using this term is not racist. … It's time for real remorse."That's from my latest column at Pajamas Media, and you should read the whole thing. Maybe Harry's been swept up in that "racist backlash" we've been warned about.
Among Harry's few defenders was Ingrid Seward of the royal-watching magazine Majesty, who told the BBC that the prince and his academy friends "were having fun and … calling each other nicknames." She pointed out that Harry's reddish-blond hair had earned him the nickname "Ginge or Ginger." (In the video, the prince-lieutenant pretends to give orders to his army comrades and then asks if there are any questions, to which one of them responds: "Are your pubes ginger, too?") Alas for Harry, "gingers" don't have quite the kind of ethnic clout in Britain as Pakistanis these days, and the revelation of his nickname prompted no demands that anyone apologize. . . .
Illegal alien who burned woman alive on subway says he drinks lots of
liquor and “doesn’t know what happened”
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Oh, so that’s the excuse this piece of shit is going to use? He drinks a
lot and doesn’t remember
The post Illegal alien who burned woman alive on subway...
3 hours ago
"Paki" was a term of abuse popularised in the nineteen seventies by fascist groups such as the National Front in phrases such as "Paki Go Home". It is generally used interchangably regarding anyone from India, Pakistani or Bangladesh. It is intended in a similar form as "nigger".
ReplyDeleteAnd while indeed some groups reclaim terms of abuse, if you were to walk through Brick Lane in London shouting "Paki" at people you walked past... well, you might not get to the end of the street.
The interesting thing is that PAKistan is an acronym made up in 1934.
ReplyDeleteThe 'Ginger' comment was pretty funny..
ReplyDeletealong with the quick reply, 'yes, they are'..
it's a mountain out of a molehill..
Third in line of succession for the Presidency still has bedsheets hanging in his closet... but Prince Harry saying 'paki'
faux outrage ensues..
The whole business is much ado about very little. Anyone who has been in the military would be familiar with that sort of non-politically-correct banter and think little of it. The fact that he is Prince of Wales means he should have a bit better judgment than to be doing the video think, but what he said isn't particularly outrageous compared to what goes on daily in most military units not on parade.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the remark in the thread below ... I didn't read the Pajamas column in time. And you've pretty much hit the nail on the head.
ReplyDeleteThis video is just soldiers cursing up a blue storm or repeating all the derogatory names they give one another (including "Paki" ... its being a derogatory term, after all).
What's changed is not primarily ethnic-sensitivity rules (which have always existed, however changed in detail), but the YouTube and Facebookization of culture, which means "among-friends" moments that can only be understood among friends are now exposed to strangers. And such moments never look good ... oh, if there had been a secret camera or Mark Powell had planted a recorder between our desks ...
Anonymous writes:
ReplyDelete"Paki" was a term of abuse popularised in the nineteen seventies by fascist groups such as the National Front in phrases such as "Paki Go Home".
Actually, the term's popular British usage dates back much further ... to the 1940s, i.e., as long as Pakistan has been a country. Its use by anti-immigration groups long predates the National Front, e.g. Enoch Powell in 1967-68, and was grammatically neutral, i.e., "Paki" was already a popular term and merely inserted into an accurate description of the desired policy, i.e., repatriation. By the early-1970s, "Paki" was also (at least) Glaswegian shorthand for a small one-room, mom-and-pop grocery store, which by that team were mostly run by Asians (hence the back formation from a term with extant currency).
if you were to walk through Brick Lane in London shouting "Paki" at people you walked past... well, you might not get to the end of the street.
Agreed ... but an outsider yelling a term in the street at strangers simply is not the same social context as Army guys busting each other's balls. The point of Stacy's whole column is precisely that ... it's being absurd to derive anything from this tape about Prince Harry generally from this incident, which wouldn't exclude its being reasonable to infer something bad about him if Harry were to say "Paki" while some of his Asian subjects or the President of India were being introduced to him.
By discounting social context ... or more accurately making a comparison based on an entirely different social context that changes all the relevant facts ... your view ultimately has to become that words have magical or inherent-natural qualities that social context and particular usage can't offset. Making it rather interesting to note that you yourself use the word "Paki" three times in your note and "nigger" once. Hmmmm ......
"If Mark Powell had planted a recorder between our desks . . ."
ReplyDeleteThen we'd BOTH be unemployed . . . er, I mean, freelancing. LOL!
At least the Prince wasn't hiding behind some headscarf like those truley bigoted anti-Israel protestors.
ReplyDeletedoes anybody what Paki mean? Paki means, The clean. Pakistan means the land of Clean people. so calling Pakistani a Paki is something which a pakistani should be proud of. As i would be.
ReplyDeleteWell, anonymous, nigger comes from the word negro, which just means black, and black people call themselves black, so wouldn't they be proud to be called a nigger by a bunch of white people?
ReplyDeleteOr do you now realize the stupidity of that?