Riz Ahmed and Guz Khan Discuss the ‘P Word’ and How the Power It Carries Depends on Who Says It
The conversation stemmed from a question about the use of the racial slur for South Asians used in their show BAIT.
The power of any word comes from the meaning ascribed to it, according to British-Pakistani actors Riz Ahmed and Guz Khan who were speaking about the use of “Paki” as a derogatory term to describe South Asians in their new show BAIT.
Speaking to Haroon Rashid of the BBC Asian Network, the pair answered a question on how they felt about South Asians in the UK using the racially-charged term, to which Khan said, “For us, putting it as part of our vernacular, is something we’ve done for decades and decades.”
Ahmed added that there were two sides to that question. “On the one hand, definitely not in favour of people using it who’ve never been called it,” he said. “On the other hand, I myself have and sometimes do use that term, within our community, as a term of endearment.”
Khan recounted how he had recently told a non-Asian YouTuber to stop using the word in the guise of harmless banter, which prompted Ahmed to clarify, “This thing is ours, this is something we can do internally, but is not permitted outside and is a strange kind of bonding and reclamation around that.”
Both actors agreed the word had disappeared from common use, but it had returned as an insult, largely on online platforms like X, where Khan said, “that word is being used in capital letters and it comes with crazy connotations used as an insult”.
He said the show had addressed this with flashback scenes “that really reference why and how that word is so powerful in a negative way”.
Ahmed posed the question of whether using the term might be perpetuating an internalised sense of self-hate in the South Asian community, to which Khan said he wouldn’t pass judgement on younger members for reclaiming it if they find it empowering.
The term is a slur aimed initially at Pakistani and later at South Asian immigrants that has its roots in a period of racial tensions in the UK. The word holds memories of violence and persecution for South Asians, especially those who were in the UK between the 1960s and the 1980s.
The reclamation of the term by young people follows the African-American treatment of the ‘N word’, which carried racial connotations in the US associated with slavery.
While it was used commonly as a derogatory term for black people well into the 20th century, it has since been reclaimed and is used by young African-Americans as a term of endearment. It is also used widely in music, particularly hip-hop and rap, where the US scene has a strong black influence. - Images
