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LOS ANGELES — An Asian-American watchdog group demanded an apology Tuesday from NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” because a comedian used a racial epithet on the show. 

“There is no excuse for something like this to have made the air,” said Guy Aoki, president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. 

The group also called for an apology from comedian Sarah Silverman for using the term “chinks.” 

While bantering with O’Brien on the show July 11, Silverman said she had been called for jury duty but didn’t want to serve. 

“My friend is like ’Why don’t you write something inappropriate on the form like ’I hate chinks,”’ Silverman said. But she didn’t want people to think she was racist, she said, so “I just filled out the form and I wrote ’I love chinks’ – and who doesn’t?” 

The term is the most offensive possible reference to a person of Chinese descent, Aoki said. 

“It’s not constructive to use such a hateful word and play it off for laughs. It just gives people permission to continue to use it,” he said. 

“She obviously chose to target a group of people that she felt she could get away with insulting. We’re not standing for it,” Aoki said. 

The network would have removed a similarly offensive reference to any other ethnic group, he added. 

A spokesman for O’Brien’s show had no immediate comment on the group’s complaint. A call to Silverman’s manager, Geoff Cheddy, was not immediately returned Tuesday. 

Aoki said his group contacted NBC’s vice president for diversity, Paula Madison, last Friday but did not receive a call back. A message for Madison was not immediately returned Tuesday. 

Broadcast networks have been under fire by the NAACP, the Media Action Network and other groups for failing to offer ethnic diversity in their series.