What
do you think of when you hear the word “chinks?" Now since I grew up on the Brooklyn streets,
where we had a huge diversity of ethnicities and a complete lack of any compulsion
to be politically correct, I do have to admit that not given a context my mind
jumps to the derogatory slang term for a far eastern person. But most of the time in context I think of it
as referring to some sort of damage to some sort of wall or hard surface. From Dictionary dot com
noun
1.
a crack, cleft, or
fissure:
a chink in a wall.
2.
a narrow opening:
a chink between two
buildings.
verb (used with object)
3.
to fill up chinks in.
Set
aside the alternative definition of a sharp ringing sound (as in the chink of
glasses tapping) I hardly ever refer to chink for anything other than an unwanted
crack or indentation. The common phrase,
which has become an idiom from an apparent use as a metaphor is “chinks in
armor.” As a metaphor it compares a
fracture of a personal defense, abstract or concrete, to the crack in armor.
Never
owning a knight’s helmet (I come from peasant stock, not aristocracy :-P) I
never think of chink as in a narrow opening, but I guess that’s the root of the
ethnic slur. The slits for sight on a
knight’s helmet are sometimes referred to as chinks, which can resemble East Asian
eyes.
Wikipedia traces the slang slur to the end of the latter part of the 19th
century:
"Chink"'s first
usage is recorded from about 1890 but "chinky" had first appeared in
print, as far as can be ascertained, in 1878. Chinky is still used in Britain
as a nickname for Chinese food.
Well
it’s good to know that it’s not just we Brooklynites that can be
insensitive. ;) But what’s important there is that the word “chink”
and its metaphoric use well predates the slur.
Why
do I bring this up? I came across this
little controversy between the United States Army, who as far as I can tell innocently used
the “chinks in armor” metaphor, and those politically correct enforcers who
screamed racism. From the article, “Army Deletes Tweet About ‘Chinks In Armor’ After People Cry Racism:”
The U.S. Army has deleted
a tweet that used the term “chinks” in armor after people freaked out that the
same word can be used in a completely different context as a racial slur
against people of Chinese descent.
“Chinks in special ops’
digital and physical armor poses challenges, experts say,” the tweet read,
followed by a link to a news release about how terrorists’ using social media
has left a hole — dare I say, a chink in
— our country’s defenses.
You
can go over and read the outraged counter tweets which forced the Army, though “shocked”
at the reaction, to retract the tweet.
So
let this post serve as a public service announcement as to what “chink” really
means.
Oh I hope no one thinks I was insulting anyone. I was trying to be a little humorous. I have lots of Asian friends at work (Asians are really into engineering) that go way back, and even my son is Asian and has Asian eyes. Perhaps I ought to delete that last sentence and picture. I'm not a politically correct weenie, but I'm not rude either.
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