“Rocket 88” would’ve been a bigger rock n’ roll hit if not for racism.
Wwwweeellll I am feeling pretty dumb now for not noticing the join date.
Actually, he joined in 2002, but his username then was Marley13.
Lucky chromosome?
Somewhere in between:
There’s a nip in the air: Janet Jackson’s house gripped by cold snap
Anthony Frederico?
Bahahahahah
Imagine the poor saps who graduated from the various "Germantown"s around the country. 
What about the actual expression used? Or does that not count for some reason?
I don’t follow this point. Of course there’s another meaning. It wouldn’t be a pun if there wasn’t.
Aaaand down the rabbit hole we go:
And no, he’s not being sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek. Hoo boy…
I don’t know what you’re asking here. I’m very familiar with the phrase “chink in the armor” and I am aware the cliche is not racist on its own terms.
Columnist suggests thing that might be bad idea. Film at 11.
I wonder if this is the source of a lot of the controversy: Lin has become famous well beyond the bounds of the typical audience of sports journalism, and so maybe a lot of people out there are if anything exposed more often to “chink” as a slur than they are to “chink in the armor”. Whereas someone writing for ESPN, if they don’t come from the kind of working class white neighbourhoods where open racist talk is still apparently heard, would–like me–not be fazed by hearing this phrase they’ve heard so many times before and never in a racial context.
So you actually counted the number of people who posted ITT, but you didn’t notice that yes, there were others who didn’t hear it as a slur in the context of “in the armor”? I’m not going to go dig up examples and I’m not pretending my view is not the minority one; but there were others besides me, probably three or four IIRC.
This is rich, coming from the dude who authoritatively steered everyone wrong in the first page of the thread by acting as though he had it on good authority that Federico was admitting he was using a pun, when his source was the same article that I read correctly as saying the opposite. Hilarious!
Wow, what a terrible analogy. It’s kind of belabouring the obvious IMO, but I’ll spell it out for you: a nuclear technician is a highly technical, highly specialised job that requires very specific training. Writing/editing requires general literacy possessed by large swaths of the population, including many (though certainly not all) of those posting in this thread.
Ah, yeah: it does matter. Say it doesn’t all you like, but it does. In fact, it is fundamental. It’s not surprising that you or most people here would resist that (I even copped to the fact that I might have sung a different tune had I not seen the headline “fresh”). Look at Milgram’s famous experiments: how many of those people do you think would have believed that they would have done what they did, had you asked them before they were put in that position? People are FOS about most anything that’s hypothetical and/or involves hindsight.
Wow, I can’t believe I still have to explain this–very disconcerting. Did you just skim the thread, or what?
I will spell it out, again: I don’t see anything wrong with the headline because I do not believe it was intended as a joke or to refer in any way to Lin’s ethnicity. The post referring to it as “funny” I found offensive because curioushat disagrees with me about Federico’s intent, yet apparently enjoys what s/he interprets as racist humour! That’s gross. I’ve found as I debate this issue in the comments section of other articles that my “allies” in supporting Federico are allies I don’t want: right wing racists. Blech.
My best friend over the past 25 years is Asian (3/4 Cambodian Khmer, 1/4 French). He has described being teased in the 1970s when he was the only nonwhite person growing up in a small Midwestern town. But since we became friends as teenagers, he has never reported any ongoing problems, or any individual incident, of discrimination. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen to anyone, ever; but you’d think if it were widely prevalent I would have witnessed it or heard about it. And we’re talking about my very best friend (not the proverbial “one of my best friends”), who was also my roommate for several years in the '80s and '90s. I also had a Chinese national as a roommate more recently, after I was divorced but before I remarried. He was not a close friend, but we still spent a lot of time together shooting the breeze while we ate or watched TV or whatever.
I went to do some research just now and was I’ll admit a bit shocked to find that the Wikipedia article on “Asian Americans” began as follows:
I followed the link, in disbelief, which turned out to be justified disbelief: the word “squinty” does not appear in that document. So I edited the phrase out of the sentence, made a note on the talk page asking for the asshole who posted that to be banned, and continued to do my research albeit a bit shaken.
The point I was going to make, which was admittedly a bit muddled by what I found there (but give me credit, I still reported it here despite it undermining my debate point), is that in sociological terms (and given that my mother and my wife are both sociologists, I tend to look at things that way), Asian Americans can not really be seen, as a class, as being the victims of discrimination (despite the fact that there are undoubtedly *individual *exceptions to this).
The reason I can say this is simple: they have the highest income and educational attainment of any ethnicity–they are the only group higher than whites in those categories. So if they are discriminated against as a class, what does that mean, that they should be outpacing all other groups by a greater margin? And isn’t that a bit racist (“Asian-supremacist”) in itself? (My Chinese roommate would have endorsed that view: he openly talked of Chinese superiority.)
Whoa, hold on…I object to your very premise. If I believed he was using the word “chink” to refer to Lin or any Asian person, I would withdraw my entire argument. But in fact I interpret the phrase “chink in the armor” as “flaw (or missing piece) in Lin’s game”. The chink is something missing from Lin, not Lin himself!
I’m not sure why you’re spelling this out to me. I am well aware of what “plausible deniability” means–are you? Do you understand that it carries a heavy insinuation that the thing being denied is in fact true? That the person “plausibly denying” something is almost openly smirking about how they are getting away with something? That is not at all what I see happening here. Both Federico and his boss have said he had no inkling the phrase would be connected with a racial overtone, and that he was “devastated” when he realised that’s what had happened. Thus “plausible deniability” does not apply here at all IMO. You can believe it does, but you were saying I was making a “plausible deniability” argument, and I don’t want to be associated with that.
I’d say that is ignorant. There are no homonyms for the N-word. Those six letters arranged that way and pronounced that way represent only one word. Thus, apples and oranges since no one “called” Lin a chink.
Do you honestly think it’s limited to “working class white neighborhoods”? I don’t even know where to begin with that one.
Again, you’re making a bunch of assumptions without evidence. I think people reading ESPN’s mobile site at 2:30 a.m. Eastern are probably going to be serious sports fans for the most part. I think you are being unfair in suggesting some groups of people are just more racist than others, and you’re continuing to overvalue your own experience.
Yes, I did make an incorrect statement based on the article you linked to in your OP. You know what this isn’t? An argument. It doesn’t address Federico’s responsibilities, the reason his failure was so egregious, or anything else having to do with the issues. But you sure did zing me about something I said 200 posts ago that I already acknowledged several times was incorrect. I’ve been schooled!
“General literacy” is not adequate for a journalist. “General literacy” is not the standard Federico is being held to, and that was precisely my point.
Very convincing. The following is not disputable: a lot of people saw the headline, a lot of people understood “chink” can be a racial slur. It does not matter the slightest little bit if they came to that conclusion on their own or if someone else pointed it out to them. (It is a fact that some people saw it right away and saw the slur, and it is obvious that the headline was not up for very long.) Either way, it puts ESPN in a position it does not want to be in.
Never might be a strong word, but my boyfriend is from Northern Ireland - we visit every year - and I’m pretty sure from the way people look at me (when we visit places a good distance from Belfast) that Asian people are few and far between (unless you go into a Chinese restaurant). Although even in Belfast I’ve gotten plenty of stares. My boyfriend told me he suffered from culture shock when he went away to university in England because he was so used to the homogeneity of where he lived (near Belfast). So I apologize for my use of hyperbole, but I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to say that Asian people are a rare sight in the more rural areas of NI.
Lyle: Dock that chink a day’s pay for napping’ on the job.
That’s not “commentary use”. That’s a character using the word in a derogatory fashion to refer to another character(s). Were you under the impression that Blazing Saddles was some kind of documentary about the Old West, that it featured interviews with real people expounding on what life was like back then?
I find it odd that a self-professed cinephile (SlackerInc) would not have seen this classic of American cinema, btw. It’s featured on nearly every list of 100 greatest movies I’ve ever seen, and is also notable for being among the first 10 movies to gross more than US$100 million at the box office. cite
Uhh, being a bit pedantic, aren’t we? Most people aren’t going to care about that distinction, and obviously so.
Ok, sure.
But what I am saying is that he probably made a pun in bad taste and it backfired a lot harder than he had anticipated, and the only way he could possibly handle that kind of outcome was to play dumb and act like he meant to use it innocently.
When someone’s race becomes a hot-button topic, journalists go into high-alert mode. Things you write during controversial times carry a lot more weight and you have to be especially vigilant and precise about what you’re saying. In order for this whole thing to be an honest mistake, he would have needed to be completely and utterly ignorant of a common slur word that most people are at least aware of, which I find hard to believe of a person who (especially) earns his living as a sports writer.
You’re missing the point, here. Why does it have to be a homonym in order to be offensive? That’s completely irrelevant, here. Offensive statements can take on many forms. It’s the responsibility of the writer to do the due diligence necessary to make sure he/she hasn’t written anything that would serve as an obvious opening for backlash.
There are no homonyms for the n-word, but “niggardly” is pretty darn close even though it’s a completely different word with a completely different meaning. And yet, you’d have to be a rather dense writer to use it in certain contexts (“Headline: Kobe Bryant taking on the niggardly role!”). It’s something that will obviously piss people off. And if someone doesn’t understand why that would piss people off, they deserve to be fired, for as far as I’m concerned, tact is part of the job description (as well as, you know, not pissing on the brand name of your employer and making them look bad).
Here’s an example of someone using “niggardly” in a way designed to piss people off.
To be clear, I sincerely doubt the ESPN writer was trying to upset anyone. Sports guys often seem to think that they can get away with making these sorts of jokes without anyone getting angry, and sometimes they are right. Other times, they are Steve Lyons or Jimmy the Greek.
I think it was just a tasteless joke that backfired in a way he didn’t necessarily expect.