Ethnic slur in the UK
Paki
is a derogatory
ethnic slur
originating from the
United Kingdom
, directed towards people of
Pakistani
and by extension
South Asian
descent,
[1]
[2]
as well as
Muslims
or perceived Muslims in general.
[3]
[4]
Etymology
[
edit
]
"Paki" is part of the
exonym
Pakistan
. It is derived from the term
Pak
(
???
) which means "purity" in Persian, Urdu and Pashto. There was no "Pak" or "Paki" ethnic group before the
state was created
.
[5]
[6]
The name Pakistan (initially as "Pakstan") was coined by the
Cambridge University
law student and Muslim nationalist from then British India
Rahmat Ali
, and was published on 28 January 1933 in the pamphlet
Now or Never
, which was the name adopted for the country after the 1947
partition of India
and independence from the
British Raj
.
[7]
[8]
History
[
edit
]
United Kingdom
[
edit
]
The use of the term "Paki" in English was first recorded in 1964, during a period of increased South Asian immigration to the United Kingdom. At this time, the term "Paki" was very much in mixed usage; it was often used as a slur. While it may seem like it would only be directed towards
Pakistanis
, it is also been directed at people of other
South Asian backgrounds
(mainly Indians and Bangladeshis) as well as people from other demographics who physically resemble
South Asians
.
[9]
Starting in the late-1960s,
[10]
and peaking in the 1970s and 1980s, violent gangs opposed to immigration took part in attacks known as "Paki-bashing", which targeted and assaulted South Asians and businesses owned by them,
[11]
and occasionally other ethnic minorities.
[12]
"Paki-bashing" became more common after
Enoch Powell
's
Rivers of Blood speech
in 1968;
[10]
polls at the time showed that Powell's anti-immigrant rhetoric held support amongst the majority of the white populace at the time.
[13]
[14]
"Paki-bashing" peaked during the 1970s?1980s, with the attackers often being supporters of
far-right
fascist
,
racist
and
anti-immigrant
movements, including the
white power skinheads
, the
National Front
, and the
British National Party
.
[13]
[15]
These attacks were usually referred to as either "Paki-bashing" or "skinhead
terror
", with the attackers usually called "Paki-bashers" or "
skinheads
".
[10]
[16]
"Paki-bashing" was partly fuelled by the
media
's anti-immigrant and
anti-Pakistani
rhetoric at the time,
[15]
and by
systemic failures
of state authorities, which included under-reporting racist attacks, the criminal justice system not taking racist violence seriously, constant racial harassment by police, and police involvement in racist violence.
[10]
Asians were frequently stereotyped
as "weak" and "passive" in the 1960s and 1970s, with Pakistanis viewed as "passive objects" and "unwilling to fight back", making them seen as easy targets by "Paki-bashers".
[10]
The
Joint Campaign Against Racism
committee reported that there had been more than 20,000 racist attacks on British
people of colour
, including
Britons of South Asian origin
, during 1985.
[17]
Drawing inspiration from the
African-American civil rights movement
, the
Black Power
movement, and the
anti-apartheid movement
, young
British Asian
activists began a number of
anti-racist
youth movements against "Paki-bashing", including the Bradford Youth Movement in 1977, the
Bangladeshi Youth Movement
following the murder of
Altab Ali
in 1978, and the
Newham Youth Movement
following the murder of Akhtar Ali Baig in 1980.
[18]
The earliest groups to resist "Paki-bashing" date back to 1968?1970, with two distinct movements that emerged: the
integrationist
approach began by the Pakistani Welfare Association and National Federation of Pakistani Associations attempted to establish positive
race relations
while maintaining
law and order
, which was contrasted by the
autonomous
approach began by the Pakistani Progressive Party and the Pakistani Workers' Union which engaged in
vigilantism
as
self-defence
against racially motivated violence and police harassment in conjunction with the Black Power movement (often working with the
British Black Panthers
and
Communist Workers League of Britain
) while also seeking to replace the "weak" and "passive"
stereotypes
of Pakistanis and Asians. Divisions arose between the integrationist and autonomous movements by 1970, with integrationist leader Raja Mahmudabad criticising the vigilantism of the latter as "alien to the spirit and practice of
Islam
" whereas PPP/PWU leader Abdul Hye stated they "have no intention of fighting or killing anyone, but if it comes to us, we will hit back." It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that academics began to take racially motivated violence into serious focus, partly as a result of black and Asian people entering academic life.
[10]
In the 21st century, some younger
British Pakistanis
and other
British South Asians
have attempted to reclaim the word, thus drawing parallels to the
LGBT
reclamation of the slur "
queer
" and the
African American
reclamation of the slur "
nigger
".
[9]
[19]
Peterborough
businessman Abdul Rahim, who produces merchandise reclaiming the word, equates it to more socially accepted terms such as "
Aussie
" and "
Kiwi
", saying that it is more similar to them than it is to "nigger", as it denotes a nationality and not a biological race.
[19]
However, other British Pakistanis see use of the word as unacceptable even among members of their community, due to its historical usage in a negative way.
[9]
In December 2000, the
Advertising Standards Authority
published research on attitudes of the British public to pejoratives. It ranked
Paki
as the tenth severest pejorative in the English language, up from seventeenth three years earlier.
[20]
Several scholars have compared
Islamophobic
street violence in the 2000s and 2010s to that of Paki-bashing in the 1970s and 1980s.
[15]
[3]
[21]
Robert Lambert notes that a key difference is that, whereas the National Front and BNP targeted all British South Asians (including Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs), the
English Defence League
(EDL) specifically target
British Muslims
. Lambert also compares the media's role in fuelling "Paki-bashing" in the late 20th century to its role in fuelling Islamophobic sentiment in the early 21st century.
[15]
Geddes notes that variations of the "Paki" racial slur are occasionally used by members of the EDL.
[3]
Canada
[
edit
]
The term is also used as a slur in Canada against
South Asian Canadians
[22]
The term migrated to Canada around the 1970s with increased South Asian immigration to Canada.
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
In 2008, a campaign sign for an
Indo-Canadian
Alberta Liberal Party
candidate in
Edmonton
was defaced when the slur was spray painted on it.
[27]
Notable uses
[
edit
]
Americans are generally unfamiliar with the term "Paki" as a slur, and U.S. leaders and public figures have occasionally had to apologise for using the term. In January 2002,
U.S. President
George W. Bush
said on
India?Pakistan relations
that "We are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis that there's a way to deal with their problems without going to war." After a
Pakistani American
journalist complained, a White House spokesman made a statement that Bush had great respect for Pakistan.
[12]
This followed an incident four years earlier, when
Clinton
White House
adviser
Sandy Berger
had to apologise for referencing "Pakis" in public comments.
[12]
Spike Milligan
, who was white, played the lead role of Kevin O'Grady in the 1969
LWT
sitcom
Curry and Chips
. O'Grady, half-Irish and half-Pakistani, was taunted with the name "Paki-Paddy"; the show intended to mock racism and bigotry.
[28]
Following complaints, the BBC edited out use of the word in repeats of the 1980s sitcom
Only Fools and Horses
.
[29]
Columnists have perceived this as a way of obscuring the historical truth that the use of such words was commonplace at the time.
[30]
It was also regularly used in
EastEnders
in the 1980s referring to the owners of the local food shop including the first episode, which in contrast was not edited out in repeats. The word was used in
Rita, Sue and Bob Too
? set in
Bradford
, one of the first cities to have a large Pakistani community ? and also in
East is East
? in which it is used by the mixed-race family as well as by racist characters.
[
citation needed
]
. In the 2018 biopic
Bohemian Rhapsody
,
Freddie Mercury
, who was Indian
Parsi
, is often addressed derogatorily as a "Paki" when he worked as a baggage handler at
London Heathrow Airport
in 1970.
[31]
In 2009,
Prince Harry
was publicly admonished when he was caught on video (taken years before) calling one of his fellow Army recruits "our little Paki friend."
[32]
In 2015, the American film
Jurassic World
was mocked satirically by British Asian comedian
Guz Khan
for using "pachys" (pronounced "pakis") as shorthand for the genus
Pachycephalosaurus
.
[33]
See also
[
edit
]
- Coolie
? Offensive term for a labourer from Asia
- Mirzai
? Epithet of religious discrimination
- Qadiani
? Religious slur
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Paki, n. and adj"
.
OED Online
. Oxford University Press
. Retrieved
6 June
2023
.
slang (offensive and chiefly derogatory). Originally and chiefly British. A person of Pakistani (also more generally, South Asian) birth or descent, esp. one living in Britain.
- ^
"the definition of Paki"
.
Dictionary.com
.
Archived
from the original on 22 February 2017
. Retrieved
22 February
2017
.
- ^
a
b
c
Geddes, Graham Edward (2016).
Keyboard Warriors: The Production of Islamophobic Identity and an Extreme Worldview within an Online Political Community
. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 132?133.
ISBN
978-1-4438-9855-3
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
4 August
2018
.
- ^
Sampson, Alice (2016).
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"
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Mischief, Morality and Mobs: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Pearson
. Routledge. pp. 44?60.
ISBN
978-1-134-82532-5
.
Archived
from the original on 19 May 2020
. Retrieved
7 December
2019
.
- ^
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2015
.
- ^
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Archived
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28 April
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.
- ^
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- ^
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Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?
: "At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal to you, in the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN [sic] ? by which we mean the five Northern units of India, viz., Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan ? for your sympathy and support in our grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and complete annihilation."
- ^
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.
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- ^
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.
- ^
a
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c
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.
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Archived
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- ^
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b
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- ^
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.
- ^
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- ^
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"
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- ^
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.
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- ^
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"From 'Paki Bashing' to 'Muslim Bashing'
"
. In Hobbs, Dick (ed.).
Mischief, Morality and Mobs: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Pearson
. Routledge. pp. 44?60.
ISBN
978-1-134-82532-5
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
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2019
.
- ^
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- ^
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