Doc,
Andrew Kohut had an article in The New York Times entitled “A Chink in the Armor.” Now, I know that “chink” is used correctly in the headline. But, I wonder what you might have to say about using this term, especially given the sensitivity to our country’s melting-pot culture. Would not “kink” convey the same message while avoiding potential offense to a reader?
Alan J. Braverman
Braverman Communications, Inc.
Answer:
Dr. Ink was born into an Italian-American neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York, just walking distance from Chinatown. His first doctor was an elegant man named Dr. Lu. Mama Ink often pushed Baby Doc in a stroller for lunch in a Chinese restaurant.
When the Italians talked about eating Chinese, or taking stuff to the laundry, they would say things like “Let’s go to the Chinks.” In fact, Dr. Ink thinks he heard that expression, used in the same way, in an episode of “The Sopranos.” Doc may have been a young teenager before he realized the term was offensive.
The word “chink” meaning a hole or fissure is unrelated to the ethnic slur, and differs from it by being printed in the lower case. It derives from a Middle English word meaning “crack,” and is used prominently in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In the hilarious play-within-a-play, one rustic lover woos another through a hole in a wall: “Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall. Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eye!”
What, then, are we to say about the headline “A Chink in the Armor”? We can say, with certainty, that it is a cliché. In this case, Dr. Ink would look hard for an alternative. This quest for originality would get the Doc off the ethnic slur hook.
“A Kink in the Armor” does little to solve the problem. The variation will only recall in the reader both the original cliché and the potentially offending word.
It may be that “chink,” meaning crack or fissure, is headed down the trail of “niggardly,” a word that has nothing to do with the familiar racial epithet, but that has come, innocently, to carry its baggage.
As a writer, Doc does not want readers distracted by connotations he did not intend.
[ In rejecting “chink,” is Doc using common sense, or being politically correct? ]
