Say Anything Blog

For saying that a black comedian didn’t sound black.

LONDON (AP) — After a royal reprimand, it’s back to school for Prince Harry.

British media outlets reported Thursday that the prince is being sent on an “equality and diversity” course by the British army after he was recorded making racist remarks.

The BBC and the Daily Mirror, citing senior defense officials, said the 24-year-old prince would attend a course designed to press home how offensive racist language is.

Last month a newspaper released 2006 video of Harry using a highly offensive term about a Pakistani officer. Harry apologized but said he had used the expression about a friend and without malice.

The prince also was recorded using an epithet for people of Middle Eastern descent to mock another cadet.

This week, black British comedian Stephen K. Amos said Harry — a lieutenant in the Household Cavalry regiment who is training to be a helicopter pilot — had told him last year that he didn’t “sound like a black chap.”

I think “rag head” is the term Prince Harry used to describe the Pakistani officer, and I also heard that it was the guy’s nickname.  The other term he used was “Paki,” apparently.

In context, I really don’t see where Harry did anything all that offensive.  The people he said the words to, and the people who were around him when he said them, weren’t offended.  They were all doing it too, including the people who the “racial epithets” were directed at.  Soldiers tend to be a rough crowd.  Their language among themselves usually isn’t the sort of thing you’d hear over tea among polite company.

It wasn’t until the media - who don’t like Harry for going off to serve his country in a war they don’t approve of - got a hold of evidence of the comments that this turned into the controversy.

And what’s offensive about saying a black comedian doesn’t sound black?  After hearing blacks here in America rail against Barack Obama for not being “authentically black,” and seeing people like Bill Cosby called “Uncle Toms” and worse for suggesting that black slang makes people sound ignorant, Prince Harry’s comment doesn’t seem offensive at all.

But the PC police got him anyway, I guess.