Star slaps Brit paper on racism

“Crazy Rich Asians” star Gemma Chan called out a recent article from the British newspaper The Sunday Times for “trivializing casual racism” against Asians amid a rise in hate crimes against people of Asian descent.

In a Monday Instagram post of the front page of The Sunday Times, Chan pointed out a clip from an article that said the late Prince Philip was “an often crotchety figure, offending people with gaffes about slitty eyes, even if secretly we rather enjoyed them.” Philip, who died earlier this month, told British university students during a 1986 trip to China, “By the time you go back home, you’ll have slitty eyes,” according to The Guardian.

“This was written by a journalist who should know better, approved by editors and sent to print,” Chan captioned her post. “To trivialize casual racism in the most widely read Sunday broadsheet at a point when the Asian diaspora is experiencing a surge of attacks is deeply irresponsible.”

The Sunday Times’ editor Emma Tucker issued an apology on Tuesday saying that the paper “did not intend to condone” Prince Philip’s previous comments and clarified that, “It was noted by us on Saturday night that the sentence was offensive and it was not published in digital editions.”

Tucker also defended Christina Lamb, the reporter who wrote the piece in question.

“Christina Lamb has spent her whole career reporting on discrimination and injustices against people in every part of the world and never intended to make light of his remark in any way,” Tucker added.

In Chan’s post, she concluded by asking her followers to sign a petition that called on The Sunday Times to issue a retraction for the article along with the hashtag #StopAsianHate.