Paul McCartney Admits To Being 'Racist' While Growing Up

Paul McCartney has admitted he was unintentionally racist in his younger years.

The Beatles star has claimed that he would use "certain words" that he later learned were offensive, while growing up in 1950s Liverpool.

In an interview with the Mail On Sunday, he said: "When I was a kid, you were racist without knowing it. It was just the normal thing to use certain words you wouldn't use 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."

Paul recently spoke out to defend Kanye West’s use of the ’n-word’ in their collaboration on 'All Day' last year.

The musical legend told a BBC Radio4 MasterTapes session audience that several people had told him not to be involved with the track, with Oprah Winfrey saying "[Kanye] shouldn’t do it, even black people shouldn’t use that word,” but that he considered her “a little conservative about that stuff”.

Sir Paul explained: “I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s Kanye! And he’s talking about an urban generation that uses that word in a completely different way.’ It’s the context. So I was actually pleased with it.”

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