Mr Starkey was appearing on the BBC’s Newsnight when he came out with the comment, which sparked anger on social networking website Twitter.
He went on: “The chavs have become black. The whites have become black."
“A violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together... that’s why so many of us have this sense of literally living in a foreign country.”
Author Owen Jones, who was also on Newsnight, said it was a “career-ending moment” and called the words “bigoted and dangerous”.
