The people from Uzbekistan are called Uzbeks, the people from Turkmenistan are called Turkmen, the people from Afghanistan are called Afghans.
It’s only come to my attention recently that calling someone from Pakistan a ‘Paki’ is an insult. Should it just be ‘Paks’ and somehow adding an I is incorrect?
Can anyone explain this to me?
It’s because dumb racists use it as a slur for any brown person whether there are Pakistani or not.
+1
How it’s used is very relevant
To use “Mick” to refer to any/all Irish people is shitty.
Using “Mick” to refer to your Irish friend Michael is fine.
But what if my Irish cousin Mick is also a Dumb Mick?
No bullshit, that’s the nickname he picked up among his brothers. We aren’t Ireland Irish, we’re Appalachian Irish, but that branch of the family is a bit batshit tbh.
But my cousin is dumber than dammit, and that’s what his brothers call him, “Dumb Mick”. The joke they have is that he ruined it for anyone of Irish descent.
That entire side of the family is a little ball of crazy though lol. Our shared ancestors were potato famine Irish, whose kids married Scots-Irish. But there’s a branch up north that married into Italian families, and another branch (mine) that married german immigrants.
So, we have family reunions, and the ethnic slurs fly harder and faster as the nights progress (along with any alcohol intake).
Which is just a long way of acknowledging your statement about context.
The correct demonym is Pakistani. Throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s the terms ‘Paki’ and ‘Stani’ were exclusively used by racists and racist organisations such as the National Front and British Movement.
Unlike the others, where the ethnic group preceded the country, to quote wikipedia, the name Pakistan “is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands, Indian and Asian, Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan.”
There is a 50+ year history of people using it as an umbrella term to (offensively) refer to all the ethnic groups above, regardless of their actual ethnic roots, or even whether they were actually from Pakistan. It’s othering, similar to the word “oriental”, with an extra splash of explicit hatred (rather than just pure ignorance)
