No, saying ‘Paki’ is never ‘banter’

Imagine the scene. You stand outnumbered as clusters of young white men jeer at you, their faces full of menace and bad intentions. They hurl “Paki” and other slurs like a shot from a pistol indicating the start of a race. The situation descends into a cascade of violence as your innate fight or flight instincts kick in. Cold adrenaline rushes into your system to combat the very real danger you suddenly find yourself in.

Many South Asians and people of Muslim background living in Britain have encountered this scenario (or a similar one) at some point in their lives. It’s never pleasant. You don’t even need to be Pakistani (or Muslim) to have experienced this, as I and many others who "appear Muslim" can attest.

However, the word – and the sentiment and feelings behind it – is now so deeply ingrained in British society that it is almost impossible to escape it and the violence it accompanies.

A societal problem extending beyond cricket

Of course, this discussion centres around British-Pakistani cricketer Azeem Rafiq’s explosive revelations in September last year about the institutional racism he faced while playing for Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC). Amongst other allegations, Rafiq accused players at the YCCC of using highly offensive racial slurs directed at his Pakistani heritage. At one point he said it was so bad that he considered taking his own life.

Following an internal investigation, the cricket club released a report a year after Rafiq’s statements admitting that Rafiq had suffered racism, but denied that the club was institutionally racist. This led to a series of events in which a number of senior figures resigned from the club. Rafiq himself gave emotional testimony earlier this week to parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, describing English cricket as “institutionally racist”. 

What is particularly galling about the entire affair is how it was initially downplayed by the club. To have privileged, powerful, white-dominated cricket clubs come out and shamelessly say that it was only “friendly and good-natured banter” is infuriating and insulting, to say the least.

But the word “Paki” is not used solely as a slur against Pakistanis, and it is not isolated to cricket. It is a pejorative that seeks to denigrate anyone who has what is deemed to be a Muslim appearance. 

To the average mindless racist, what else would a “Paki” be but a brown person who, if a woman, may wear a hijab or, if a man, may have a beard?

In fact, targets of the slur don’t even need to match this broad description. I have Indian Hindu friends who tell me that they have been attacked with the same term. I also distinctly recall having to deal with the fallout of a racially and religiously aggravated attack against my sister, who was verbally assaulted using the same language while simultaneously having her hijab pulled off her head on a busy English high street in the middle of the day.

While I am brown, my sister and I are blessed and fortunate to have a mixed heritage, and she is white with freckles. But the presence of her hijab was enough to provoke violence in broad daylight, with no condemnation from the many largely white passers-by who did nothing to aid a woman being attacked by a full-grown white man.

Old hatreds, modern propaganda

While these passers-by may have not have intervened in part because of the social-psychological phenomenon known as the “bystander effect”, there is still a deeper social malaise afflicting British society.

Many of these slurs, insults, and stereotypes are imperial context, originating with the partition of the British Raj in 1947. Britain, which has ruled the region in one form or another since the 18th century, oversaw the violent partition of its imperial territories into Pakistan and India. They also took in an influx of cheap labour from its former territories to rebuild after WWII.

However, very much like today, anti-migrant sentiment peaked in the 1960s after politicians espoused hard-right views. This was exemplified by Tory MP Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech, which strongly criticised perceived mass migration and framed the white Englishman as being a “stranger in his own country.”

This and other political stunts designed to appeal to an increasingly hostile (and overwhelmingly white) electorate led to what many remember as “Paki-bashing” – gangs of white men beating up brown men and women, destroying their businesses, and menacing them at home.

Today, despite the false assumption that societies progress in a linear fashion as time moves on, we can see reflections of Powell’s vitriol. Divisive politicians such as Brexiteer-in-Chief Nigel Farage have placed giant posters depicting brown, bearded refugees marching toward the British homeland with the words “Breaking Point” emblazoned next to them in bold red letters.

We currently have a prime minister who thinks it is acceptable to recite colonial-era poems about a country he was visiting as a diplomat, and who has insulted veiled Muslim women as “bank robbers” and “letterboxes.” 

This is aside from the unending deluge of Islamophobic hate in mainstream media outlets. One study, which analysed just the fourth quarter of 2018, showed almost two-thirds of articles on Muslims associated them with negative behaviour, with terrorism as the most common theme.

In an environment where such hatred is normalised, are we really surprised that white people in modern Britain think calling someone a racial slur is simply “banter”? 

When the entire system, from the political elite to the mass media, is rigged to produce a hateful narrative against a racialised group - or groups - of people, then we have no option but to call out modern Britain as institutionally racist. We must do this until it accepts it has a problem and takes steps to deal with it before the next generation of “Paki-bashers” become too powerful to suppress.

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