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Paul McCartney has spoken of being “racist without knowing it” as a child growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Speaking to the Mail On Sunday, The Beatles musician explained, “When I was a kid, you were racist without knowing it. It was just the normal thing to use certain words you wouldn’t now.”
He continued, “Along the way we suddenly realised how it would make the people you were talking about feel. I don't think until then we'd ever even thought about other people. It was like a joke between ourselves. But then someone points out, 'Well, that’s denigrating…' you know, in my case, black people.
"And then the penny drops, and I think that's what happened for a lot of people. Certainly a lot of people in my generation used to use words you wouldn't use now.”
He also spoke of Kanye West’s use of the N-word in the pair’s collaborative single ‘All Day’. "Kanye's an artist,” he insisted. “He can say what he wants. It’s the freedom of speech, literally, "The n-word, to a lot of black people, particularly younger black people, it's almost a term of endearment.
“It's a slang word, and I think the good thing about it is that it kind of takes the sting out of it. It just becomes a word, rather than the derogatory word it could be used as."
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