Every day, from classrooms to social media, we witness the usage of racist, offensive, and hurtful racial slurs. A lot of the derogatory language used is justified by being labeled as “jokes” and “friendly banter”. A large target of slurs is the Asian community, with varying ethnicities and backgrounds. However, the seemingly harmless slurs being thrown around in our daily language comes from a deep history of extreme bigotry, racism, and prejudice. Awareness needs to be brought upon the bias and hatred these terms originated from, and how much damage using racial slurs can truly cause.
First recorded in the 1880s, the slur chink originated from the Chinese courtesy ching-ching, which evolved from the word China. It is also known to have originated from Qing, as in the Qing Dynasty. In the early 20th century, Chinese immigration was seen as a threat to the living standards of white people living in North America. As they saw the Chinese as invasive, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, which banned Chinese immigration in the United States. It wasn’t until 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, that the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed and Chinese immigrants were eligible for citizenship. With the outward racism towards Chinese Americans dating back to the 19th century, it is not surprising to hear that racially provoked attacks, both verbally and physically, were being inflicted on Asians; and the slur chink grew in popularity.
The slur has come to generalize Asian people, despite the many different ethnicities, cultures, and dialects within Asia. In Australia, the word was used significantly during the Gold Rush era of the 1850s and 1860s, where Australians used the term with hostile intent when referring to the Chinese population of the country. As the slur became more widely used in the 19th century, assaults on Chinese miners and racially motivated public disturbances grew in frequency. Not only were these assaults motivated by the appearance of Asians (e.g. the small eyes stereotype), there was resentment of the fact that the Chinese miners were sending money back to their families in China rather than spending it on the Australian economy.
In the United States, there have been many instances of people using chink to insult and degrade students of Asian descent. In the early 2000s, the University of California Davis had a string of racially motivated incidents and crimes committed by white students towards Asian students. These crimes mostly occurred in fraternities, and incidents included chink and other racial epithets being shouted at Asian students. One specific incident involved the slur being used during an assault and robbery of an Asian fraternity by white males.
This term has also been used in the media to subtly insult Jeremy Lin, an American basketball player of Chinese and Taiwanese descent. In February of 2012, ESPN suspended an employee and fired another for using the headline “Chink in the Armor” to reference the basketball player. The usage of these terms tear down a large number of ethnicities, and the racist intentions tear down large communities as a whole, creating a negative stigma over people who look a certain way.
In the classrooms, many young Asian-American students have been harmed extensively by hurtful words said to them by classmates. Karen Liang, an Asian American student recalls the traumatic experiences she had after immigrating to the United States as a child. She recalls, “They started singing, “Me Chinese, me Chinese,” and after that, I realized they were making fun of my eyes. I went home that day and cried. I specifically remember asking my parents if there was something wrong with me. It made me feel bad about my body.” She also recalls incidents where kids would repeatedly call her a chink, and would not stop until she had to move schools. Liang’s experience is not isolated and has been happening to many people of Asian descent. There have been extremely negative impacts on one’s self-esteem and confidence.
People choose to use words without considering the harm that comes with using them. Racial slurs for all races are offensive and are all hurtful and demeaning. These slurs have impacted lives every day, with people being degraded verbally based on the color of their skin. It is time that we all learn to accept one another, and educate ourselves on the impact words can have. It is time to spread love and positivity, and do our best to work together to remove the unnecessary hatred in this world.
Written by: Linda Liu
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