Friday, February 13, 2004 :::
Kate responds to my lack of concern over the name of "Chink's Steaks", a 55-year-old restaurant in Philly. It's quite possible that I have underrated the offensiveness of "chink" as an ethnic slur against Chinese people. Certainly, in my mind, it's quite similar to referring to a white guy as a "cracker" -- mildly archaic slang, slightly-less-mildly insulting, but not deeply offensive, or even -- and this is probably just me -- a syllable one automatically associates with Asians.
Kate is right that in the context of "Chink's Steaks", I wouldn't really think of a chink in armor. I'm not sure I'd think of the epithet, though. I'd probably assume that it was somebody's nickname, if I thought beyond "how's the food"? Writing about it now, it strikes me as a phonically inelegant name. It also reminds me a bit of "Toot Sweets", from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". But I digress.
In Kate's original entry on the matter, she wrote:
Personally, I don't see that there's much of a question here. Replace the word "Chink" with almost any other racial epithet and the debate ends rather quickly. The name is offensive. Change it.
With some racial epithets the debate would end rather quickly. With "kraut", for example, I don't think it would be a big deal -- it wouldn't upset me, at least, and the name "Jens" is not as Mediterranian as you might think. I heard a Frenchman once say that he was offended by the name of the Frog Pond in Boston Common, but if the group we were in hadn't realized that he was joking, we would have assumed him to be deranged (as it happens, he was both).
Now, if I were advising someone nicknamed "Chink" on how to name a steak house that he's opening, and it occurred to me (or someone pointed out) that the name might be offensive to some people, I'd suggest that he choose something else. An offensive name isn't usually good for business. The stick in the gear-train, though, is that this place has been around for 55 years. I have an aversion to renaming established institutions (especially if there's been a brand built up, though I doubt any regulars would stop coming because they were confused by a name change). And I'm a little puzzled -- has this movement to get the name changed been around for that long, but never had much traction before now? Did someone suggest to the original owner -- shortly after he opened -- that he go with a different banner on the facade, only to be gruffly ignored? I assume the epithet has been around as long as the Union-Pacific railroad -- i.e., longer than the restaurant.
At any rate, I'll concede that I'm not much of an expert in racial epithets, and I probably underestimated how offensive "chink" is.
::: posted by Steven at 1:10 AM
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