RangersFan
Member
kind of find it alarming how people keep saying how he is from china or taiwan despite it being well known that he's american. i guess asians will always be a perpetual foreigner...
Potentially.
You have to factor in who is giving the "honor.".
If an american went to China, and a had a hamburger named after him/her, nobody would give a shit.
Yes, but "chink" in the phrase "chink in the armor" has a clearly non-racial metaphoric context. Unless you can clearly established that somebody used the phrase with regard to a Chinese person BECAUSE they're Chinese, then you have to actively imbue the meaning from a completely different, unrelated context in order to construe it as something racial.
There is a degree of volition involved in the taking of offense. It's fine to take offense to somebody calling you a nigger. I take exception to people opportunistically jumping on an innocuous phrase in order to read race into it.
He grew up in the US..
kind of find it alarming how people keep saying how he is from china or taiwan despite it being well known that he's american. i guess asians will always be a perpetual foreigner...
To those who don't understand how this is racist or offensive.
Ethnic minorities in America constantly are confronted with messages that caricature and reduce their racial identity as non-conforming or abnormal to normative majority (white) culture. This occurs most frequently in media and occasionally expresses itself in products such as Abercrombie shirts and this Ben & Jerry Ice Cream. It chains and resigns a person's ethnicity to an artifact of culture that is different than the dominate group. The dominate group then has the power to shape and subjugate the subordinate group to a stereotype or caricature.
In this particular case, it is telling they thought the best way to honor Jeremy Lin is to associate his success to his cultural stereotype. This type of messaging hurts minorities, disarms their achievement, and places their ethnic stereotype as a notable token.
What are you? A 10 years old? Yes, "Chink" is a slur against Chinese people.
I'm sorry that you lost your ability to be racist or to use racist language to mock people from different culture in this day and age.
You don't have't to establish any such thing. The point is not did he mean this in a racist way or not, the point is to try to ensure literature or language is provided in such a way that such a question isn't needed in the first place.
If there is a high probability that a certain phrase or sentence (etc) could be perceived as racist or offensive to many, that in itself is enough reason not to use it, especially when there are a million and one alternatives. It's about compassion and tact, some people need to learn it. I'm not even Chinese but I find the headline of that article to be either racist or in extremely bad taste. Worthy of lambasting either way.
I'm saying it's absolutely stupid to take offense at words that come up in everyday language with zero intent of it being racially charged.
because some people MIGHT take racial offense to it
Hamburgers aren't from Hamburg, Germany?
Please grow a brain. Nowhere did i say that I "lost my ability" to be racist. You have to make some pretty gigantic leaps in logic to come up with that half-brained conclusion.
What I'm talking about is the fact that completely random words are now so "racially charged" that people get offended over things that aren't even meant to be offensive in the first place. "Chink in the armor", like a whole lot of people in this topic have said, is a completely racially neutral phrase that doesn't in any way intend to offend. It's exactly about intent.
A lot of the things people are saying in this topic are exactly reflective of the fact that the US society has become far too obsessed with being "PC". "DON'T EVEN SAY 'CHINK IN THE ARMOR' WITH A CHINESE PERSON IN THE ROOM OMG ARE YOU INSANE?!?" <-That there is the sign of a culture obsessed with being PC.
I'm not saying I should have the right to march around Chinatown showing "CHINK!" at the top of my lungs just because it has a non-offensive meaning. I'm saying it's absolutely stupid to take offense at words that come up in everyday language with zero intent of it being racially charged.
But I don't expect very many to agree with that. If you're part of the PC-obsessed culture you're not going to see what's wrong with it.
Fried chicken ice cream sounds sort of good, actually.
But that's just it, you have no idea if it was meant in a racial manner or not. You're just assuming it. I'd argue the writer had the intention and knew full well of it's play on words, again an assumption. I just can't fathom he'd be that stupid as to not see the reference. Point is, readers can't know which it is, so it's best not to use it.
I don't have a hard time believing it at all given that their headlines previously are usually dumb jokes.I'm having a really hard time believing that an ESPN writer was using that word intentionally as a play on words with the meaning that is racially offensive.
But that's just me. If it turns out that he did indeed use it as a play on words then yes I completely agree with you.
It was clearly an intentional pun. In some contexts, a minor racist joke is acceptable, but not in a headline of an organization that wishes to appear professional.
Fried chicken ice cream sounds sort of good, actually.
But that's just it, you have no idea if it was meant in a racial manner or not. You're just assuming it. I'd argue the writer had the intention and knew full well of it's play on words, again an assumption. I just can't fathom he'd be that stupid as to not see the reference. Point is, readers can't know which it is, so it's best not to use it.
There's no "might" about it. You have to be a buffoon not to realise a good portion of people would take offence to that.
If an american went to China, and a had a hamburger named after him/her, nobody would give a shit.
It was clearly an intentional pun. In some contexts, a minor racist joke is acceptable, but not in a headline of an organization that wishes to appear professional.
Maybe - *gasp* - the writer didn't even think about the race of the person that he was using the term to refer to?
Again, why should I give a shit what people will take offense to if they have literally no rational reason to take offense to it? THEY'RE the ones turning something that has an inherently non-racial meaning and construing it as something racial, not me. "Chink in the armor" is naturally neutral, which means that our assumption of a lack of racial intent assumes fewer things than yours does.
Maybe - *gasp* - the writer didn't even think about the race of the person that he was using the term to refer to?
Again, why should I give a shit what people will take offense to if they have literally no rational reason to take offense to it? THEY'RE the ones turning something that has an inherently non-racial meaning and construing it as something racial, not me. "Chink in the armor" is naturally neutral, which means that our assumption of a lack of racial intent assumes fewer things than yours does.
Kettch said:The editor himself said it was not intentional, that he'd used the phrase a hundred times before and thought nothing of it.
So now not only is he racist, but a liar as well apparently.
i guess a good analogy for this is an up and coming black ping pong player that gets a fried chicken ice cream named after him
The editor himself said it was not intentional, that he'd used the phrase a hundred times before and thought nothing of it.
So now not only is he racist, but a liar as well apparently.
Maybe - *gasp* - the writer didn't even think about the race of the person that he was using the term to refer to?
Again, why should I give a shit what people will take offense to if they have literally no rational reason to take offense to it? THEY'RE the ones turning something that has an inherently non-racial meaning and construing it as something racial, not me. "Chink in the armor" is naturally neutral, which means that our assumption of a lack of racial intent assumes fewer things than yours does.
Fortune cookies are from California.
Anyway, that was a dumb fucking move by Ben and Jerrys. Then again, Ben and Jerrys can have a Hitler themed icecream, and I'd let it slide. That ice cream is so good.
Honest question, can you think of a stereotype that could possibly offend American white people? A fried chicken ice cream would piss people off in America, much less China.
Watermelon ice cream makes way more sense, by the way. Both are stupid stereotypes because everybody in the South eats fried chicken and watermelon.
"Chink in the armor" is not that commonly used a phrase these days, and combined with Lin's Asianness as a much-emphasized point of discussion, your utter conviction that this couldn't have possibly been deliberate is reaaaaaaallllllly stretching.
Do they serve fortune cookies in Taiwan? If so I don't see what the big deal is.
But nobody is actually arguing this.I stand by the assertion that "chink in the armor" is a racially neutral term in its de facto state
I stand by the assertion that "chink in the armor" is a racially neutral term in its de facto state,
I gave you my reasoning on it above.and if you want to prove racism by it, the onus is on YOU, the person choosing to take offense to it.
Chink in the armor is quite common, at least in my experience. I use it, and I've heard others use it.
I stand by the assertion that "chink in the armor" is a racially neutral term in its de facto state, and if you want to prove racism by it, the onus is on YOU, the person choosing to take offense to it.
But nobody is actually arguing this.
This is where I chime in: "And so is Jeremy."I actually think that was your point. That it wasn't racist because it's not Chinese.
The thing is, though, that many people are not making the argument on the basis that the headline is from a website that always uses bad puns in its headlines, which is somewhat reasonable. They're arguing that using "chink in the armor" with regard to an Asian person is inherently insensitive, which is what I take issue with.
Are you Asian?
Are you Asian?
Isn't chink in the armor just a term for something damaged or not right? I thought it was a very old term predating any racism. But I can see how it can be used for racial puns, etc.
Isn't chink in the armor just a term for something damaged or not right? I thought it was a very old term predating any racism.
How often do you see "Chink in the armor" as an actual headline? I've seen the phrase used before, but never as the headline for an article.