I am anti racism and generally think that the Paki is offensive - but he said it without thinking and I believe he didn't mean it offensively.

Interestingly, when I was working for my local behaviour support service as a teacher,part of my role was to go into schools to counsel children that were having behavioural problems. One of the schools was a predominantly Muslim girls school and the Pakistani girls frequently used the word "paki" about themselves.

I remember one girl chatting to me about how strict her mom was at home and how she wasn't  let out with her friends in the evening and her actual quote was " She's a typical Paki mom, miss". We chatted about how it was fine for her to use the word Paki, but had I said it - well can you imagine the headlines??

A lot of these words have to be seen in the context that they are used.

To add another thought - how many of the black rap songs today are are full of the word " nigger" or " nigga" - and not a word is said about it? However if for example a white pop star used the word in their song there would be World War three!

It's an interesting one isn't it!?

I think we are going into an abyss of Political correctness in this country - in all sorts of ways.

Having said that I want to reiterate that , as a rule I would not condone the use of the word paki.

Hi Helen,

I think it's what we call double standards. It's ok for a race to refer to themselves as a word they deem offensive but it's different when they are called it.

I worked with someone from Pakistan and she said she found the paki word acceptable and what would be the most insulting to her would be to call her an Indian!

For me I don't see the difference between calling a person from Pakistan a paki or a person from Britain a brit. I think it's how you use the words that counts.

Sunshine.

Cl on MC Aug 08 ,  MC Dec 08 , Great Debates, Parenting Polls and Debates and Make Friends at iVillage

Hi

I don't watch the show and quite frankly couldn't care less, it is all publicity for the show tbh, publicity, whether good or bad is always good for ratings. I think it was a thoughtless, stupid comment and one that was bound to cause offense. I am not sure I consider a silly off the cuff remark to be racism though.

 I don't think he should necessarily be sacked but I do think the BBC is guilty of a double standard here, Carol Thatcher got the boot for an off air comment after calling someone a "golliwog", I don't see that as any worse than "paki", yet Carol Thatcher got the chop pretty quickly and yet here the BBC are desperately trying to stop Anton Du Beke (bet his real name is Brian lol) from losing his job.

Although I really don't like Ms Thatcher one bit I don't see why she got sacked and Anton hasn't, it really does smack of hypocricy. If the BBC has guidlines and rules on conduct and behaviour then these should be applied across the board imo, irrespective of who said what and when.   

I think it's important whether he INTENDED or even THOUGHT he was being racist. Obviously if the intention was to be racist he should be sacked, but a moment's thoughtlessness (or ignorance) mustn't condemn him to a lifetime being branded a 'racist'.

It may be diferent, but an Australian friend said to me one day, talking about a girl I worked wioth, "You know who I mean - the p-k- girl". I looked at her astonished but then realised that she didn't know that in ths country that's a no-no word. When I pointed it out she said at first "surely it's like her calling me an Aussie" and I had to point out that it's the historical connotations of the P word which have made it a racist epithet.   

This is interesting!

Couple of things. I agree with Hanna that it should be based on whether he intended or thought he was being racist. Unfortunately, my (limited) understanding of Race Law says that it is not the intention of the 'perpetrator' but the opinion of the 'victim' that designates whether or not a Racially motivated crime or incident has taken place. For example, my husband is African and if he were to be mugged in the street and the mugger - let's say he's not a black man - says "give me your phone, Ni***", then if my husband feels he was mugged BECAUSE he is black, this is not just a mugging but also turns into a hate crime too, for which the penalties can I believe be higher.

This is the problem we have in this country. It is not easy to 'prove' your intention, either as the defendant or the prosecution (or as Anton du Beke and the BBC!). This is why it falls on the 'victim' and the victim's feelings of being racially abused.

In this case, it was clearly a stupid and insensitive comment to make to Ms Rouass. Not only because it is not acceptable to use such racial epithets, even as a joke, but also because as a public figure he is supposed to be held to a higher standard, especially when he knows he is being filmed for a family TV show!

In response to Bumfy, I completely agree with you that there are different standards being applied here as were applied to Carol Thatcher. I start by saying I don't particularly like her (or her mohter!) but if I remember correctly, she did not say that the player was a Golliwog, but that his or her hairstyle reminded her of the Golliwogs that used to be on Robertson's jam when she was young. She was referring to a cartoon character on a jar of jam, that also happens to be an unpleasant racial epithet. She was silly and foolish to say it, but it was in a private conversation, off-air and was, to my mind, far less offensive that calling someone a 'P*k*' while being filmed by the BBC.

To my mind, he is perceived as 'more valuable' to the BBC than she was and so they'll save him whilst they happily threw her overboard (I guess there were probably other reasons too for sacking her, but these are not made public - that is my guess, anyway).

Personally, I think that we really need to spend time as a nation dealing with ACTUAL racism, and not walking in step with the 'Political Correctness Police' at the expense of real social problems, as people are too afraid to state what problems there actually are in our society at risk of being called racist, or some such other Hate Crime.