British YouTuber withdraws after racist remark

British rapper and YouTuber KSI has publicly apologized and announced a social media hiatus after being criticized for using a term classified as racist.

KSI had used a derogatory term for people of Pakistani descent in a show on the YouTube channel of his collective The Sidemen as part of a game. The accompanying video was later unavailable online.

“I want to apologize for the use of racial slurs in a recent Sidemen video,” the 29-year-old Briton wrote on Twitter on Monday. “There’s no excuse, no matter the circumstances, I shouldn’t have said it and I’m sorry.”

The YouTuber said he’s been doing a lot of wrong lately and announced he was taking a break. It’s not the first time KSI – real name Olajide “JJ” Olatunji – has apologized for his choice of words.

After the show there was public criticism: London DJ Bobby Friction, among others, wrote that he was very upset that someone his children loved used such terms. He himself had to suffer from the name used.

KSI, whose father is Nigerian and is black himself, has more than 24 million subscribers on YouTube and 8.8 million followers on Twitter. Most recently, he garnered attention with a drink he released with YouTuber Logan Paul.

There is such a high demand for the drink among children and young people that there have been chaotic scenes in supermarkets and it sometimes trades for many times its original price. (sda/dpa)