ephemera

yoisthisracist:

You know what, this would be a great time to link to maybe my finest, and definitely most racist, joke.

So this question has been crossing my mind at random for a while, and this post finally made me decide to look up the origin of the term “chink” when used to refer to a small hole, opening, or vulnerability. (I already knew the use of “chink” for that purpose was current in Shakespearean England thanks to—you guessed it—the Pyramus and Thisby bit from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but since the English were well aware of China, the term could still have had a racist origin.)

According to the derivation I found for that usage—and I don’t presently have access to the OED, so I’m certainly open to correction—the non-slur use of the term “chink” is related to the word “chine”, meaning a deep narrow ravine, and ultimately derived from the Old English cinu, itself of Germanic derivation.

“Chink” as an ethnic slur, on the other hand, seems likely to have been derived as a bastardisation of “Qing” (as in Qing Dynasty) or some other originally inoffensive term that was repurposed for racist use by the European sphere.

These conclusions are the result of relatively cursory research, and as such I’d be happy to be corrected if someone has better evidence. But operating under the temporary assumption that these derivations are accurate, the use of the non-slur term “chink” seems totally unrelated to the racist term “Chink”, and thus to me comes across as totally inoffensive.

Thoughts?