Duke Defends Chinese Slur

'The Chinese weren't worried about it, so why should anyone else?'

By Mark Russell, Newser Staff

Posted May 30, 2011 5:51 AM CDT

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Duke Defends Chinese Slur — Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh looks up as after Britain's Queen Elizabeth dedicated a wreath of flowers at the site of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attacks during a visit to New York last July. (AP Photo/Lucas Jackson, Pool)

It's been 25 years since the Duke of Edinburgh used the term "slitty-eyed" during a trip to China, but the Queen's husband still thinks it was no big deal, reports the Telegraph. “I'd forgotten about it," the Duke says in a documentary made for his 90th birthday. "But for one particular reporter who overheard it, it wouldn’t have come out. What’s more, the Chinese weren’t worried about it, so why should anyone else?” While visiting Xian in 1986, he told some British exchange students: “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.” (More Duke of Edinburgh stories.)

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