Sometimes “Martin’s got cooties!” and “Madison just peed her pants - again!” aren’t the only things hollered on the playground. In an event as likely as pigs taking flight, trashy British tabloid The Sun has gotten serious and pulled together a cross-section of kids to talk about the racial slurs they’ve been stung by. From “spic” to “towel-head” to “paki,” the kids sound out on the effects adult-sized epithets can have on kids still struggling with multiplication tables.

So What Do We All Have In Common?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2007040816,00.html

So what prompted The Sun, usually more prone to “Queen in fish-and-chips shock” headlines, to tackle a big issue?

For the past three weeks, Britain has been glued to “Celebrity Big Brother,” a TV show that hermetically seals minor celebrities in a house for 3 weeks and documents the resulting cabin fever. CBBs are usually filled with skeezy flirtations and battles over who drank the last of the milk; the latest edition birthed a near-international incident when a clique of giggly British Z-listers began taunting Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty with racially-charged insults. House mates Jo O’Meara, Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd, all white, referred to Shetty as “Shilpa Poppadum,” said she belonged in a “slum,” and suggested that people in India are “skinny and diseased” because they don’t cook their food properly.

While the accused housemates argued that their comments were motivated by a dislike for Shetty’s cooking and occasional bossiness, not racism, viewers were unnerved to see how quickly the women hurled insults at a nation of 1 billion in response to typical roommate squabbles. And when the typical childhood insults of “four-eyes” and “dummy” get shoved aside for harder taunts, it reveals an unnerving undercurrent of schoolyard racism.