This was the ESPN headline that has caused controversy, resulting in the removal of the headline and dismissal of the employee responsible:
ESPN:
At ESPN we are aware of three offensive and inappropriate comments made on ESPN outlets during our coverage of Jeremy Lin.
Saturday we apologized for two references here. We have since learned of a similar reference Friday on ESPN Radio New York. The incidents were separate and different. We have engaged in a thorough review of all three and have taken the following action:
The ESPN employee responsible for our Mobile headline has been dismissed.
The ESPNEWS anchor has been suspended for 30 days.
The radio commentator is not an ESPN employee.We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin. His accomplishments are a source of great pride to the Asian-American community, including the Asian-American employees at ESPN. Through self-examination, improved editorial practices and controls, and response to constructive criticism, we will be better in the future.
Personally? I think that’s a rather clever line and as far as I can gather, there was no racist intent to demean Jeremy Lin. Max Bretos, the anchor who has been suspended for 30 days, tweeted the following:
Wanted 2 apologize 2 all those I have upset. Not done with any racial reference. Despite intention, phrase was inappropriate in this context.
My wife is Asian, would never intentionally say anything to disrespect her and that community.
Wanted to thank all those for their support. Has meant a lot to me and my family.
Worthy of blogs and conversation amongst friends (and apparently acceptable if you are doing comedy) but probably not very wise to print/say in the ultra-pc environment that is the mainstream media, populated by the perpetually offended & outraged and hypersensitive among us.
Despite the controversial nature of using this phrase to describe this player, the most socially damaging things ESPN could have done were issue a public apology and reprimand its employees.
Imagine a young Knicks fan who loves Lin and sees ESPN apologize for using “chink in the armor.” He then asks: “Dad, what does chink in the armor mean?”
Dad answers saying that it’s a phrase used for when someone has only one weakness. Then the young fan asks why it’s bad to say, and dad is forced to explain to him the derogatory use of the word “chink.” Thus, a meaningless racial slur is preserved because of the hyper-sensitive political correctness of modern media.
By acknowledging this gaffe to such a degree, ESPN increased the social damage exponentially. The headline was only up for 30 minutes and the phrase was only uttered twice out loud: once on TV and once on an ESPN radio broadcast by a non-ESPN employee.
The ESPN.com statement issued stated, “we are aware of three offensive and inappropriate comments made.”
In a certain context, the word chink can be offensive, but the “armor” idiom is used so frequently in sports journalism that it should take precedence. Instead, ESPN wrongly deemed the statements “offensive and inappropriate” and further perpetuated the perceived racism.
From a public relations standpoint, the response from ESPN was a no-brainer. Yet, we ought to care more about the public’s continuing recognition of fake words created by hate-mongers. By ignoring pre-existing definitions and acknowledging ridiculous slurs in an effort to not be considered racist, the media does the exact opposite.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines racism as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities.” Media outlets deciding that, because Lin is Asian, he therefore does not have the capacity to be described using a commonly used phrase is the real racism.
The overreaction the comments spurred outweighs the severity of the comments themselves. Ridiculous concepts like racial slurs will never go away with this attitude. ESPN should have stood firm behind its employees who, most likely, had no bad intentions.
In a case like this, the racism exists nowhere but in our own minds.
Apparently the ESPN editor who was fired, Anthony Federico, wrote the phrase without even thinking of the connection between “chink” and Lin’s ethnicity. I’m willing to give Federico the benefit of the doubt (as does Lin); but even if there was a pun intended, I find it more clever than offensive.
Bruce Maiman offers a bit of history on usage of the word “chink”:
The phrase, ‘chink in the armor’ is some 600 years old. The word ‘chink’ meant ‘slit’ or ‘narrow opening’ –a weak spot– and dates back to circa 1350-1400. Six-hundred years ago, soldiers wore armor. If the armor had a narrow opening in it, it was a weak spot which enemies tried to take advantage of.
It’s first usage as a racial slur occurred somewhere around 1900-1905, or earlier. The narrow opening of Asian American eyes seems to be one derivative. Others suggest that it derived from the sound of working on the railroad, when metal of a hammer hitting the rail gave off a “chink” sound. The labor of Chinese immigrants was instrumental in the building of railway lines and the nation’s expansion westward. It was around this time that Chinese immigration was perceived as a threat to the American way of life, which triggered a wave of anti-Asian xenophobia.
People need to just relax.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
I was unaware of the definition of a chink in armor; I doubt if the author was aware of the 600 year old technological reference to armor or that he expected the public to know of the definition. More than likely, he thought he was being creative and cute; and there goes a career down the outhouse hole, with no one rushing to pick him up and gain leverage from his mistake.
For me, a pun should have at least one meaning to be deciphered and preferably two. This one didn’t register on the pun scale. The man is guilty of being stupid and a failure as a punster; is this grounds for dismissal? Well of course, companies should expect the people they hire to be either witty or have an in-depth analysis. But that isn’t the reason they passed on to the public. Oh well, the SEIU has an excellent benefits package. Try to remember, you loyal Liberals, if you deviate from the Party Line, you can expect to be terminated; the author should keep that in mind in his next life, if he still wants to be a journalist.
@Skookum: I’ve got to disagree with you on this one Skookum. Commenters use the “chink in the armor” phrase all the time, and most people generally know what it means, even if they don’t know the history behind it. It is more of cliche than a pun. If you google it, and go back about 35 pages through the listings to a time before the ESPN fiasco, you’ll see it got used in every context imaginable before then, without any negative connotation.
Wordsmith is right. This whole situation is the result of oversensitive PC’s who are looking for any way they can to cast blame and cry bigotry. People shouldn’t have to google every sentence before they say them out loud or write them down to make sure they aren’t stepping on some racially sensitive toe, and the rest of us shouldn’t be so quick to cast blame when someone screws up. The reaction and apology by ESPN just makes it worse and did more to acknowledge the power of the grammar assassins that it did to calm racial adversity.
On a lighter note, a community college here in Wyoming hired a guy named Del Nose to coach their college rodeo team last month. The headline read, “Northwest Picks Nose.” I’m sure that someone should have been fired over that one! 🙂
Firing someone over this was probably an overeaction particularly if the pun wasn’t meant (although that is hard to believe). Yet calling someone a chink is offensive and should be avoided or do we become relaxed with all the rascist words of years gone by and start punning on those?
Guy should for fired for outright stupidity.Everyone knows “chink” is derogatory like gook or the “n” word.
2nd problem “Chink in Knicks armour” connotes weakness. A losing team with it’s super star Carmelo Anthony out injured,has gone 8 and 2 since Lin took over at point guard averaging 20+ points and 7+ assists. An incredible addition of strength not a weakening chink. This guy should be on home and garden or the cooking network.
Oh man, Wisdom… thought I’d die laughing reading that one!
@Richard Wheeler:
That’s actually what I thought when I first saw this. Never mind whether one believes that the world has gone too PC or not, the fact that many people would possibly be outraged by the headline should clue people in to ensure they proofread a headline like that and maybe even get another opinion prior to publishing it. To me, the fact that the guy wrote that headline and allowed it to go through means he is stupid. Unless, of course, he was trying to get fired, which would just be weird.
@GaffaUK:
Should we really allow certain words to hold such power over our emotions? What about symbols? A swastika? How about historically in Buddhism? What’s the proper emotional response? Does intent matter, or just the way people react, regardless of the motive of the one using a word or a symbol?
An interesting book that comes to mind is this one. (I remember catching an episode of Boston Public that made mention of this book).
@Wordsmith
Of course words have power over our emotions. Simply look at this site to see how emotions go sky high over words – e.g. Teabaggers, Wing-nuts, moonbat, retard etc etc. It is naive to think otherwise. And symbols too. Would you wave a swastika outside a synagogue and tell people it’s a Buddhist symbol and tell them to relax? Or how about parading some KKK symbols in the Bronx? People know that a lot of words and symbols have more than one meaning and that is why context and intent matters. Chink in the armor as a phrase is fine generally but when used in context in regards to a Chinese player who isn’t a weakness to the team – is inappropriate and at best clumsy. I fail to see why if it was an intended pun – it’s as you put it – clever? What’s clever with racist insults? Do you call your asian friends and colleagues chinks?
MATA
that was SKOOK with NORTHWEST PICK NOSE,
and I cannot stop laughing on this one, even if MR NOSE would be in front of me,
bye
@GaffaUK:
My question to you was, “should it?” Should people so easily allow their emotions controlled and manipulated? Should their buttons be so easy to push? And so then, whose problem is it? Is the person using the hateful rhetoric the one causing actual harm or is it how the other person receives it? Probably both.
Actually, I can call them that and more: gooks, nips, @sswipes, etc. for the very fact that they are my friends. As you say, context and intent matter. By calling my friends names, is my intention to actually harm them?
Whether Federico was even thinking of the racial connotations of “chink” or not when he made his phrase (and “chink in the armor” certainly would be a race-neutral, normative phrase when applied to anyone else of non-Chinese descent), what was his intentions? Was it to be racially insulting with intent to do emotional harm? I think not. Stupid and insensitive (and ignorant if the association of “chink=Chinese” was not known to him) perhaps; but for that, I just shrug my shoulders. Just as Lin himself seems to have done. My point is that people stir up a lot of brouhaha over the most insignificant of slights, making them rise to the level of offense and hypersensitivity that I’d say, by a stretch, is related to the kind of emotional attachment and response that gives rise to violent uproar over a few Korans being accidentally burned.