Just read an article after seeing the headline, “Darling uses racial slur.”
He said there was a “chink in the armor” of Japanese pitcher Tanaka.
Where’s the racial slur there?
“Chink in the armor” refers to a vulnerability, and has been used that way since people started wearing armor 500 years ago.
Just because he used it to refer to a Japanese player - and Japanese players aren’t referred to insultingly as “Chinks” anyway - that’s an abbreviation for Chinese - does not make it racist, anymore than referring to a “black hole with money being sucked into it” for example refers to anything but the “black holes” in space.
I wish someone would do some research to find out how many times sportscasters use the term “chink in the armor” referring to any player who has made an unexpected error, before they start deciding it’s racist because they say the word “chink” in the proper context.
I’m gonna say it this way…while I agree with you on simple premise, you gotta question the inability to recognize the potential optics of a statement like this.
Its like the guy who told a black man he was out of his cotton picking mind…was it racist? Maybe…I don’t know his actual feelings about blacks. Was it a stupid thing to say? Yep.
Same holds true in this instance as well.
Alex I agree. “Chink in the Armor” is a very old expression referring to a vulnerability, an area of weakness.
If this player was of Greek origin, & a sportscaster referred to his “Achilles heel”—I believe the term originated from mythology in which baby Achilles’ heel was missed in a bath & thus permanently weak—would that remark be considered racist? Or ethnocentric?
Freedom of the press doesn’t exist when every little thing said is racist, or journalists & broadcasters must read the Miranda Warning before writing or going on air.
Very true.
You would be making a fair comparison if at any time calling a person of Greek origin Achilles was ever considered a slur. While this particular slur wouldn’t even be ethnically correct, to ignore that some lazy racists would call anyone of Asian decent a chink would be a bad decision.
I agree with both of you that its not a racist comment…I disagree that it wasn’t a stupid on to open oneself to, however.
Reminds of a story a while back where someone used the word niggardly in a piece they wrote. It wasn’t even about black people yet many lost their mind nationally because of their limited vocabulary they didn’t realize this was an actual word. They just assumed it was a slur.
It’s pretty sad so many can’t find a dictionary or even go to www.dictionary.com to see that ‘niggardly’ means stingy or miserly.
