Republican congressman Peter King under fire for using anti-Asian racial slur 'Japs'
Republican congressman Peter King under fire for using anti-Asian racial slur 'Japs' while slamming Donald Trump on Morning Joe
Peter King, a New York representative, criticized Donald Trump's potential foreign policy and pretended to impersonate the likely nominee
King pictured Trump like 'the guy at the end of the bar' who says: 'Why pay for the Japs, why pay for the Koreans?'
The term 'Japs' became common during the Second World War, especially after Japan launched a surprise attack on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor
A civil rights group launched a campaign against the word in 1957, and it is now widely regarded as disparaging and offensive
But King later said he was 'using it to make a point', adding that people were 'too politically correct'
By CLEMENCE MICHALLON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM PUBLISHED: 00:58 GMT, 15 May 2016 | UPDATED: 02:00 GMT, 15 May 2016
Republican congressman Peter King used an anti-Asian racial epithet while caricaturing Donald Trump on Morning Joe - and later refused to apologize for it, opting to repeat the slur instead.
King, a US Representative for New York's second congressional district, slammed Trump's potential foreign policy during an interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday.
'National defense and homeland security are issues that mean the most to me and there's real issues with him, real problems with his views,' King said.
'I don't know if he's thought them through or it's just like the guy at the end of the bar that says, "Oh, screw them, bomb them, kill them, pull out, bring them home. You know, why pay for the Japs, why pay for the Koreans?"'
The term 'Japs' became common during the Second World War, especially after Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary online lists it as 'usually disparaging', while the Oxford dictionary states it is 'offensive'.
A civil rights group, the Japanese American Citizens League, launched a campaign to eliminate the use of the term in 1957.
But King, who endorsed Trump regardless, refused to apologize for using the slur, and told The Hill he was using it to make a point and would make it again.
'I stand by the merits of what I said. I was quoting the guy at the end of the bar who needlessly offends, who makes snaps decisions and doesn't care, who suddenly says, "The hell with them, the Japs and Koreans,"' King told The Hill.
King, whose grandparents were Irish immigrants, said he wouldn't get offended if someone used the term 'mick' - an offensive term to designate Irish people.
'We’re getting too politically correct. Let's not get overly sensitive here,' he added.
King also told the website he would 'never' apologize to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group that blasted him for using the slur.
'It is unconscionable for a national elected official to use such a derogatory term to describe the Japanese people, or by extension, Japanese Americans. We ask Representative King to apologize and to refrain from further use of derogatory language targeting any national, ethnic or minority group,' CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement.
King and the group have feuded in the past. When King was Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, in 2011, he wrote a letter challending Attorney General Eric Holder's decision not to prosecute the CAIR as part of a terror finance case.
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also asked King for an apology.
'Mr. King knows his words have an impact. Using the J word is disgusting and harkens back to a shameful time in our history when violence, xenophobia, and the internment of Japanese Americans were everyday phenomena,' Representative Judy Chu, chairwoman of the caucus, told The Hill in a statement.
'These words are not only offensive, but they also isolate and divide us as a nation. Mr. King should leave this racist terms back in the last century and apologize to the Japanese American community for his comments.'
Republican congressman Peter King under fire for using anti-Asian racial slur 'Japs' while slamming Donald Trump on Morning Joe
