The video was shot by me. Killing time before our flight, messing around, I panned the group, gave a running commentary on each lad, and when I came to my fellow cadet and good friend Ahmed Raza Kahn, a Pakistani, I said: Ah, our little Paki friend … I didn’t know that “Paki” was a slur. Growing up, I’d heard many people use that word and never saw anyone flinch or cringe, never suspected them of being racist. Neither did I know anything about unconscious bias. I was twenty-one, awash in isolation and privilege, and if I thought anything about this word at all, I thought it was like Aussie.
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