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Politically Correct?
Posted by Carl Gomez 2/10/2006 7:29:04 PM

When people are too quick to take offense my antennae go up and I tend to push back, yet I am torn. Torn between not wanting to offend and the desire for people to use rational judgment.

Can it not be considered the dummying down of our sensibilities if words do not retain their meaning? Certainly slang or popular vernacular are ever changing, but the genesis and use of words should not be clouded by the politically correct platform that the bullies of our modern day political climate seem to be showering to the ill informed.

Common sense tells me that there is a teaching opportunity when political opportunists exploit words with one set of roots to the less educated, so as to manipulate opinions to fit their political agenda. There is also an opportunity to mend racial and ethnic bitterness by so doing.

So one must then ask, �What is to be gained by the misleading and misinforming our population?� I am afraid the answer that question is indeed something for which to take offense.

Back from the South Bronx
Posted by Bob Baird 10/3/2003 1:51:32 PM

Good thing I dropped in again.
When I wrote recently about the distinct differences in the use of Chinks and Chinaman during my youthful days in the South Bronx, I wasn't making a case for them -- just noting that even when it comes to ethnic slurs, bigots can split hairs.

The usual suspects
Posted by [User profile deleted] 10/3/2003 8:34:17 AM

I suspect Bob Baird was describing the 1950s with his usages. Was it tasteless? Oh, yes. By today's standards. However, I suspect Baird was deliberately using the words to specifically evoke a reaction, but not a negative one necessarily. (A similar effect is achieved in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The young girl -- and everyone around her -- uses terrible terms because that's what they did then.)

Perhaps someone else from the 1950s could weigh in on whether such terms were used through ignorance or deliberately.

In the 1970s there was a commercial where some actor (of Asian descent) tells his customer, a white woman who looks like she has no trouble paying the laundry bills, that the way he got the laundry so clean was "ancient Chinese secret."

His wife on the commercial, in a perfectly American accent says something like "My husband. ... Here's his ancient Chinese secret."

(No, she doesn't produce a wheelbarrow. She starts to wax enthusiastic for some brand of detergent.)

In college, a couple of people (also Asian) mentioned that they hated that commercial because it made it look like all Asians did was open laundries.

I always saw it as being pro-Asian. The guy behind the counter is certainly sharper than the customer. I mean she's so stupid she doesn't even know he probably uses detergent to clean clothes. But the wife trumps them both.

Her line "My husband." You can practically hear her saying "That idiot. I could have done a lot better. Believe me." shows you that she's got his number. Then she let's you in on his 'ancient Chinese secret,' effectively emasculating the poor schmo behind his back.

Of course, I was 6 years old then and thought my first grade teacher Mrs. Ellis must know Nichelle Nichols because they were both black women.

I now suspect that Mrs. Ellis and Nichelle Nichols probably traveled in different circles altogether, what with them living on opposite coasts and all.

Disappointment
Posted by Freddie Yap 10/3/2003 4:24:04 AM

I'm ethnically Chinese and as I read Bob Baird's seemingly carefree use of the words "Chink" or "Chinaman" in his comments posted on 9/25/2003, it felt like someone had just gouged out a big black emptiness from inside of me.
I don't have an issue with the use of the word in the phrase "a chink in the armor" that Dr. Ink had thrown out for discussion. It�s a commonly used expression and has no racist connotations for me whatsoever.
But to use the word "Chink" in isolation and as a derogatory term is a stinging slap at my ethnic identity. The word "Chinaman" too simply drips with contempt.
As a journalist, I'm deeply disappointed that Bob isn't more sensitive to the use of such damaging words. I can only hope he�s being ironic.
I don't believe that being overly politically correct is always the answer to smoothening over racial differences. But there are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed. And to me, the use of the words "Chink" and "Chinaman" only serve to wound and skewer.

Group slurs
Posted by Pam Robinson 10/2/2003 9:24:37 AM

Does anyone belong to an ethnic group that doesn't have its own slur?

Years ago, I participated in a month-long seminar at the University of Missouri on race and other matters. At one point, we were dispatched to a bar to discuss ethnic slurs. We were a very mixed group, so there was plenty of material. After a couple of drinks, we began mentioning slurs we knew about our own groups, then after several more rounds, slurs we knew about others, offered delicately, we thought, in the haze of alcohol.

After a while though, we realized that the locals in the other part of the bar, hearing part of what we were saying but appearing to miss the educational aspect of the exercise, had begun shouting out slurs for our benefit. Pretty much everyone in our group got hit by one slur or another. My favorite was the gay designer named John who was more offended by his name being used as a synonym for toilet than by the remarks offered by the bar crowd.

Add to those we shouldn't offend.
Posted by [User profile deleted] 9/29/2003 9:32:27 PM

I'm just wondering. For all the time news types spend obsessing about not offending, where's the intense self-examination and criticism and so on about the offense committed against the minority of people who wish to be well-informed without having to wonder what the craven editorial types who meekly submit the dreck that is called news have left out for the latest edition?

(Sorry, long sentence. Me try again. Smarties hurt by poor news. Why not better?)

Personally, I'd rather be called every slur that relates to me than have to put up with the oily doing-it-for-your-own-good nonsense excuse that is cited by so many journos who prefer that little lie to having to admit that a few bullies have the major media of this country cowed.

By the way, White House Press Corps: You should all go home and do what Nixon (he was a president) did: resign in disgrace.

Is kink any better?
Posted by Josh Awtry 9/26/2003 12:54:38 PM

Be careful about using "kink" as a replacement for "chink." Grammatical differences aside, wouldn't "kink" be offensive to sexual fetishists?

(Lest anyone be offended, this is sarcasm.)

He meant well
Posted by Pam Robinson 9/26/2003 8:05:10 AM

The question of oversensitivity reminds me of a situation I ran into a few years ago while walking a young Asian-American job candidate down to the cafeteria. We encountered one of the paper's top executives who struck up a conversation about the weather, which had suddenly become autumn-like. He said, while glancing at the job candidate, "Yes, that's quite some N...chill in the air." He had nearly said "nip" and had had to make an obvious sharp turn in mid-conversation, a painfully apparent turn. Oddly, the candidate didn't seem to notice, perhaps because he was young, and not Japanese, and maybe therefore not aware of the "nips" slur on Japanese. Or maybe he was just hungry and had already decided we were all bozos.

I'm with everyone who thinks newspapers ought to educate, not run around fearful of hurting someone's feelings all the time, though I do wish, really, those Cleveland and Washington teams would find other nicknames. And that their fans would stop claiming their nicknames "honor" the natives.
Pam

A South Bronx view
Posted by Bob Baird 9/25/2003 5:04:03 PM

I've got no problem with "chink." But as for Chinks, the use in the South Bronx differed from the use on the Lower East Side, Doc.
I'm my dear departed mom sent me to pick something up at the Chinks, I would have gone to get the chicken chow mein and egg rolls.
But if she wanted meto pick up my dad's heavily starched white dress shirts from the laundry, she'd have told me to go to the Chinaman.
Where I grew up, on the fringe of Fort Apache in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinks never starched a shirt and the Chinaman never steamed a dumpling.

Kink vs. Chink
Posted by Sarita Wilson 9/25/2003 1:05:19 PM

Dr. Ink:

While refraining from the use on "chink" so as not to offend readers is admirable, the possible substitute term "kink" might also be offensive to other readers, as you indicated. For instance, "kink," and "kinky" have been used descriptively of African-American hair. Note the following definitions: "curl tightly, of hair." Synonyms: nappy, crispy, knotted, etc.

My true beef is with political correctness. While it's important not to offend others for whatever reason, I think it goes a bit too far at times. I was not offended at all upon reading the title of Andrew Kohut's article "A Chink in the Armor." At first, what popped into my mind was a chain with a broken/cracked link, and not one of my Asian neighbors. At which point I laughed hysterically because I couldn't believe that someone of average intelligence would think of the latter when reading such a headline, and not of the intended clich�. The same is true of the word 'niggardly.' Although I've only recently, within the past couple of years, had experience with this mistaken slur. I, however, had the common sense to look up the word, as opposed to those who just assumed it was a misspelling of the infamous "N-word."

At any rate, I'm done beefing, and I always enjoy reading your column. Keep up the great work. Thanks.

Chinese in armor?
Posted by La Tricia Ransom 9/25/2003 12:29:11 PM

I'm with most of the posters here in that "chink in the armor" is perfectly fine.
Dr. Ink brings up the example of "niggardly" too, referring, no doubt to the big brouhaha about two years ago when the Washington politician used the word and people got their knickers in a knot over it. I'm black, I know what that word means and yet, I was not surprised by the response by many in the black community. This was clearly a case of oversensitivity.
Would "chink in the armor" raise the same furor in the Chinese American community? I'm not sure; I don't think so. But even if it might, I think journalists/journalism has a commitment to literacy as well as a commitment to the sensitivities and sensibilities of its readers.

Having rambled on, my point is: I agree it would have been better to avoid the cliche, but because it was a cliche, not because it had the (infintessimal) chance of offending someone.

A Geezer Speaks
Posted by Mary Kane 9/25/2003 11:45:33 AM

As a writer, I prefer not to kow-tow to the increasingly crashing bore of tedious, excessive, overwrought political correctness. Rather, it seems to me, serious writers have an obligation to help recapture a literate society. A daily newspaper could be an excellent forum for such a crusade. This can be done without being insensitive and without losing one's sense of humor. Viva l'esoterica.

Mary Kane

Stop the whining
Posted by Jose Zepeda 9/25/2003 11:38:43 AM

While I realize that to some 'chink' is a racial slur, reading the surrounding context reveals 'A Chink in the Armor' is merely another aboused cliche. At what point do we stop catering to the folks with no vocabulary, walking on eggshells because someone may read our headline and totally miss the point? The Doc raises the example of 'niggardly,' which is a harmless word, but, since some dolt with no vocabulary read it wrong, the word is not banned, exiled because it sounds like something else. All headlines will eventaully read: 'Person does something, no offense."

a dink in the armor
Posted by Lisa Scheid 9/25/2003 11:28:06 AM

When I read chink I did NOT think ethnic slur, I thought "cliche"

When I saw, kink I thought... kinky.

It may be a generational thing since I'm YOUNGER than a baby boomer.

And by the way, what's with Dr. Ink always writing about sex. Isn't he getting any?

Times change
Posted by Pete Skiba 9/25/2003 11:19:48 AM

I'm a baby-boomer and it wasn't until I was about 17 that I found out my old man's favorite Chinese restaurant was the China Clipper, not "The Chinks."
I was born in a neighborhood in Camden, N.J., called Pollock Town. It is still called Pollock Town by the current residents and there aren't many Pollocks left there.

Kinks v. chinks
Posted by Mike Janssen 9/25/2003 10:07:30 AM

Good advice, Doc -- and besides, "kink" means "a tight curl, twist, or bend in a length of thin material, as one caused by the tensing of a looped section of wire" -- which could not develop in armor. (One could argue that kink would be permissible given that it also means "a difficulty or flaw that is likely to impede operation, as in a plan or system," but one doesn't operate armor.)

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