I Do Not Have Chinese in My Armor!

Jeremy Lin is of Asian descent. Recently, a big brouhaha occurred over a few sports analysts using the term "chink in the armor" when Lin's penchant for turnovers led to a loss by the New York Knicks. One headline editor was fired, an analyst was suspended for 30 days, and many people weighed in the matter.

What pretty much every person who weighed in seemed not to know is that the phrase "chink in the armor" and the word "chink" have been around for centuries before it became a pejorative word for Asians (Chinese specifically).

My research shows that the word chink has been around since approximately the 1300s and means a small crack, hole, or opening in something. The phrase "chink in the armor" has been around just as long, and means, literally, a hole or opening in an armored suit of mail, which an enemy can exploit. The term can also be onomatopoeic and mean to make a short, sharp, ringing sound, as of two coins or two glasses hitting. The use of the word as a pejorative is much, much more recent, coming around the 1900s, when America brought a bunch of Chinese to America and forced them to work on building the railroads. They were treated as less than human, so pejorative terms were used to further denigrate them.

The sports analysts used a phrase that would be perfectly acceptable to use for any other race, and has been, when talking about finding the possible weakness of a sports player who has otherwise shown no weaknesses. Lin made a huge splash by righting the Knicks' ship, helping them to win their first seven games with him as the starting point guard. However, people noted that his turnovers were high and, when those turnovers finally led fairly directly to a Knicks loss, the analysts rightly thought that those TOs might be the "chink in Lin's armor."

One of the comments I read was that (paraphrased) "you wouldn't use an African-American pejorative to describe an athlete, so why would you use a Chinese-American pejorative?" Well, here's the problem with that thinking. The word "nigger" has no other meaning than as a pejorative for black people. Whereas, as I mentioned above, the word chink has two meanings that have been around for centuries prior to it becoming a pejorative. It has legitimate uses in everyday conversations. Many pejoratives are simply that. But some have had meanings and value prior to becoming a pejorative, and those meanings and value should not be lost.

The sports analysts in question used the phrase and the term correctly. I would be willing to bet they have used that same phrase on other athletes at various times throughout their careers without any backlash or media sensation. At this point, I think this backlash is actually proving racism in another fashion; why can't people use a legitimate word in a legitimate fashion without being vilified in the press?

An interesting side-note to this discussion: I play Dungeons & Dragons. This is a game that takes place in a fantasy medieval setting and has characters who wear medieval style armors. On one of the forums for the game, I was discussing the ability for someone to find and exploit literal chinks in the armor of players who wear these armors. When I posted the comment, the line read "... *****s in the armor ...". Now, if anywhere should allow the legitimate use of the phrase "chinks in the armor" it should be a fantasy game that actually uses armor and has ways of exploiting weaknesses in it.

The political correctness pendulum has been too far to the right for way too long. We need to grow thicker skin and a sense of humor, as well as become educated enough to know when a word has more than one meaning. We should also learn to look at meaning and use and determine if the person intended a slight. With some pejoratives it is easy, because they have no alternate meaning. But some do, and care should be taken with them to determine intent before raising an uproar.