# What makes "Chinaman" an insulting term? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 12, 2009, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145 "2009-05-12T07:20:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/61 "2009-05-13T16:17:40Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Chinaman is a type of ship. It is not an ethnic description. It is absolutely clear from this thread and from any cursory google search that “chinaman” is an ethnic descriptor. The custom of using “man” (merchantman, man of war, etc. ) to refer to ships is totally unrelated and I would be interested in learning about the origin but that is another thread alltogether. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/62 "2009-05-13T16:28:45Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > chinaman as a negative slur far outdates Kung Fu. Read yourself some Kipling Can you find any citation of Kipling using it as a slur? I think you got it backwards here and right in your earlier post in that at a time when blacks and Asians were considered inferior the words used to refer to them took the same connotations. It was not the word but what it referred to which was considered bad. Any other word would have taken the same connotation. We see that today with the euphemism treadmill where words come and go because they soon become tainted with the same association as the word that preceded them. The word Chinaman was used by Kipling as an objective, neutral, noun but his concept of Chinese people was negative. Much like people on this board can say “Muslims support terrorism” and that does not make “Muslim” an insult nor is it intended to be. Someone can say “Mexicans are lazy” and the word Mexican is not intended as an insult or slur. I do not think Kipling used the word as a slur but rather as an objective identifier. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/63 "2009-05-13T16:58:38Z")
Objective term or not, Kipling never had anything good to say about the Chinaman: [American Salmon](http://www.overmywaders.com/cblog/archives/102-American-Salmon-by-Rudyard-Kipling.html) > [@](#): > > Only Chinamen were employed on the work, and they looked like blood-besmeared yellow devils as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that lay upon the floor. [Letters of Travel](http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/letters-of-travel/14/) (Chap 14) > [@](#): > > The Chinaman has always been in the habit of coming to British Columbia, where he makes, as he does elsewhere, the finest servant in the world. No one, I was assured on all hands, objects to the biddable Chinaman. He takes work which no white man in a new country will handle, and when kicked by the mean white will not grossly retaliate. [From Sea to Sea](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/seatosea/chapter10.html) (Chap 10) > [@](#): > > Hong-Kong showed me how the Chinaman could work. Canton explained why he set no value on life. The article was cheaper than in India. I hated the Chinaman before; I hated him doubly as I choked for breath in his seething streets where nothing short of the pestilence could clear a way. There was of course no incivility from the people, but the mere mob was terrifying. There are three or four places in the world where it is best for an Englishman to agree with his adversary swiftly, whatever the latter’s nationality may be. Canton heads the list. Never argue with anybody in Canton. Let the guide do it for you. Then the stinks rose up and overwhelmed us. In this respect Canton was Benares twenty times magnified. The Hindu is a sanitating saint compared to the Chinaman. He is a rigid Malthusian in the same regard. [From Sea to Sea](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/seatosea/chapter24.html) (Chap 24) > [@](#): > > IT was a bad business throughout, and the only consolation is that it was all my fault. A man took me round the Chinese quarter of San Francisco, which is a ward of the city of Canton set down in the most eligible business-quarter of the place. The Chinaman with his usual skill has possessed himself of good brick fire-proof building and, following instinct, has packed each tenement with hundreds of souls, all living in filth and squalor not to be appreciated save by you in India. That cursory investigation ought to have sufficed; but I wanted to know how deep in the earth the Pigtail had taken root. Therefore I explored the Chinese quarter a second time and alone, which was foolishness. No one in the filthy streets (but for the blessed sea-breezes San Francisco would enjoy cholera every season) interfered with my movements, though many asked for cumshaw. I struck a house about four stories high full of celestial abominations, and began to burrow down; having heard that these tenements were constructed on the lines of icebergs—two-thirds below sight level. Downstairs I crawled past Chinamen in bunks, opium-smokers, brothels, and gambling hells, till I had reached the second cellar—was, in fact, in the labyrinths of a warren. Great is the wisdom of the Chinaman. In time of trouble that house could be razed to the ground by the mob, and yet hide all its inhabitants in brick-walled and wooden-beamed subterranean galleries, strengthened with iron-framed doors and gates. On the second underground floor a man asked for cumshaw and took me downstairs to yet another cellar, where the air was as thick as butter, and the lamps burned little holes in it not more than an inch square. In this place a poker club had assembled and was in full swing. The Chinaman loves ‘pokel,’ and plays it with great skill, swearing like a cat when he loses. Most of the men round the table were in semi-European dress, their pig-tails curled up under billy-cock hats. One of the company looked like a Eurasian, whence I argued that he was a Mexican—a supposition that later inquiries confirmed. They were a picturesque set of fiends and polite, being too absorbed in their game to look at the stranger. We were all deep down under the earth, and save for the rustle of a blue gown sleeve and the ghostly whisper of the cards as they were shuffled and played, there was no sound. The heat was almost unendurable. There was some dispute between the Mexican and the man on his left. The latter shifted his place to put the table between himself and his opponent, and stretched a lean yellow hand towards the Mexican’s winnings. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/64 "2009-05-13T18:34:18Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Dude, the Chinaman is not the issue here. Also, Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/65 "2009-05-13T18:54:08Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > But, is there any strength behind that word? I picture it is as being the equivalent of the the supposedly-perjorative “cracker” directed at a white man by a black person here in the US. Are you thinking it’s directed at Afrikaners by black South Africans? I was given to understand it was an expression used by white Anglophones (for whom there are one or two unlovely Afrikaans expression in their turn). ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/66 "2009-05-13T18:57:00Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > chinaman as a negative slur far outdates Kung Fu. Read yourself some Kipling But what I’m saying is that, The TV series Kung Fu propagated the usage. It exposed the derogatory usage to more people than Kipling ever did in a tangible way, within moving pictures of a Cowboy script. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/67 "2009-05-13T19:14:24Z")
Also, in your Kipling examples, just because he uses Chinaman as a noun or description of nationality within his derogatory fictional ramblings does not make the descriptor a bad word. I can just as easily substitute Englishman, Frenchman, or Dutchman for Chinaman in any of those excerpts above and it does nothing to make perjorative the actual descriptor of nationality, because I could easily use the same descriptor to speak glowingly and in noble terms about the nationality ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/68 "2009-05-13T23:26:38Z")
> [@devilsknew](#): > > Also, in your Kipling examples, just because he uses Chinaman as a noun or description of nationality within his derogatory fictional ramblings does not make the descriptor a bad word. > > I can just as easily substitute Englishman, Frenchman, or Dutchman for Chinaman in any of those excerpts above and it does nothing to make perjorative the actual descriptor of nationality, because I could easily use the same descriptor to speak glowingly and in noble terms about the nationality You could, but here’s the thing: People didn’t. The term “Chinaman” was used almost exclusively to speak in condescending terms. Ed ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/69 "2009-05-14T00:20:27Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > You could, but here’s the thing: People didn’t. The term “Chinaman” was used almost exclusively to speak in condescending terms. The point is that the word itself was not used as an insult or slur. Some people have nothing good to say about Muslims or Mexicans but that does not mean the words are insulting or slur. Ed ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/70 "2009-05-14T01:20:44Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Whatever the origins of “gay” as a pejorative, if it’s left to its own devices it’s entirely likely it will end up meaning “stupid, ineffectual” with no memory of its homophobic origins; and whether or not, they that appropriated the word for their own slang have no right to protest over someone else doing likewise. Um, they damn well do have a right to protest if the word “gay” is used **as a pejorative term specifically because of its association with homosexuality**. That isn’t just “appropriating a word for one’s own slang”, that’s being directly insulting and offensive to homosexuals. So “the origins of ‘gay’ as a pejorative”, far from being the trivial non-issue you’re apparently suggesting, are in fact crucial to this subject. As an illustration, consider the following parallel case: You’re doubtless aware that the name “Malacandra” refers to a fictional extraterrestrial utopian society in a 1938 novel by C. S. Lewis. If I object to what I see as the rather schmaltzy Christian-allegory piousness of Lewis’s depiction, I might coin the term “Malacandra thinking” to pejoratively describe mushy-headed sanctimony in general. Since the origins of that pejorative term would have nothing to do with you, even though it appropriates the name you’ve also chosen to appropriate for a different purpose, you’d have no right to protest. On the other hand, if a lot of people happen to be prejudiced against **you** in particular, and I use “Malacandra thinking” as a pejorative term for stupidity or obtuseness specifically because it evokes dislike and contempt for **you** , then I’m insulting **you** , not just appropriating for my own slang a name you happen to use in another context. You’d have every right to be pissed off about that. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/71 "2009-05-14T07:51:22Z")
Arguable, but I don’t think I have the right to be peeved at anyone except the person whose kimstupidity\* led him or her to coin the usage in the first place. If other people decide that the resonance of “Malacandra thinking” perfectly encompasses the kind of addlepatedness that they’re trying to convey, despite having not the least personal beef with me, then it fits me to resign. The word was not mine to appropriate; it had another meaning before I ever chose to self-designate by such an odd term and there are plenty more that I can choose to replace it for my own use. Most people who subsequently use the phrase “Malacandra thinking” will have no idea it ever meant me. - A word meaning “that quality of thinking exemplified by a particular argument expressed in a particular context on such-and-such a day by such-an-one”. Not to be conflated with any false cognate from which it appears to derive. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/72 "2009-05-14T09:56:39Z")
RE Kipling s would have to find relevant passages… I’m thinking of some in Kim but especially of a short story of an opium den run by a chimaman. maybe in Plain Tales of the Raj? I personally do not think Kipling was a racist or used the term to that end. I think he was using a common term in the narrator voice of a ‘superior’ English man in india. Most English of that era thought themselves superior to ‘the native’ and some of Kipling’s writing captures that. Kipling himself spoke fluent Urdu (?), grew up in India, had a horrid time at boarding school in England, was a reporter based in poor areas of india, etc. He’s possibly my favorite author. ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/73 "2009-05-14T15:33:33Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You can always make fun of the Irish, though; they are the last ethnic group that can be openly derided without fear of repercussion and consignment to the correctness gulag.Stranger Disagree. The group that continues to get the most grief and never peeps about it is the group of people called _men_. You won’t find anyone saying “The Irish are so stupid!” “I have to train my Irishman to do what I want him to do.” You won’t find lists circulating on the web of ways a cucumber is better than an Irishman, and if you do, you’ll be hearing about it from someone, you can be sure. Not an ethnic group, per se, but a belittled, derogated, and disrespected group for sure. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/74 "2009-05-14T15:46:22Z")
disagggree it stupid peepol whut get most greef you joke abut stopidd pepol nobody say shit ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/75 "2009-05-14T16:22:25Z")
> [@mrpayday](#): > > Well it’s unlucky to kill them > > [must have killed a Chinaman - Wiktionary, the free dictionary](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/must_have_killed_a_Chinaman) Huh. I’d never heard that before. The phrase “He doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance” is far more common in the U.S., but it also seems to be dying out, from what I’ve observed. There may be something to the Seventies TV show _Kung-Fu_ having given the word “Chinaman” heightened pop-culture prominence, although clearly in a way that showed it to be insulting, but it had been used plenty of times before that, and almost invariably in a dismissive, insulting/arrogant “Yellow Horde” manner, it seems to me. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/76 "2009-05-14T17:54:14Z")
Let us not forget the story about hangin’ judge Roy Bean and the Chinaman. An Irishman killed a Chinaman because he charged too much for his laundry or something serious like that and was brought before judge Roy Bean who set him free because he couldn’t find any law in the books about killing a Chinaman. > [@](#): > > The man was arrested and brought before magistrate Bean, who listened to the evidence, which was given by the accused himself, and then proceeded to turn the pages of the revised statutes: “This here book, which is a Texas law book,” he announced, “says that hommyside is th’ killin’ of a human, male ur female. They is many kinds of hommyside --murder, manslaughter, plain hommyside, negl’gent hommyside, justifiable hommyside an’ praiseworthy hommyside. They is three kinds of humans - white men, niggers, and Mexicans. It stan’s to reason thet if a Chinym’n was human, killin’ of him would come under th’ head of praisworthy hommyside. The pris’ner is discharged on condition that he pays f’r havin’ th’ Chinee buried.” The Wikipedia article is worth reading: [Chinaman - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/77 "2009-05-14T18:04:05Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Arguable, but I don’t think I have the right to be peeved at anyone except the person whose kimstupidity\* led him or her to coin the usage in the first place. […] Most people who subsequently use the phrase “Malacandra thinking” will have no idea it ever meant me. 😃 That’s a point, but I don’t think it really applies at this stage of the adoption of “gay” as a generic pejorative term. Many of the people who use it pejoratively, AFAICT, are still very well aware that its meaning is based on derogation of homosexuals, and they don’t mind that in the least. If “gay” as a generic pejorative does reach a point of being so dissociated from gays as a group that most people who use it have no idea of the connection, then I agree with you that those people shouldn’t be chided for it—any more than those who speak about, say, welshing on a debt or vandalizing a building, completely oblivious that those terms were originally derogatory of actual people called Welshmen or Vandals. However, we’re not at that point yet with “gay”, and I for one think we should resist getting to that point. (Moreover, if we do get to that point it’s possible to retreat from it on grounds of principle, as we did with the now-unacceptable verb phrase “to jew down”, meaning to haggle with or out-bargain.) > [@CC](#): > > The group that continues to get the most grief and never peeps about it is the group of people called men. You won’t find anyone saying “The Irish are so stupid!” “I have to train my Irishman to do what I want him to do.” You won’t find lists circulating on the web of ways a cucumber is better than an Irishman, and if you do, you’ll be hearing about it from someone, you can be sure. While I deplore sexist “humor” directed against men, I have to point out that men are hardly unique in this grievance. (Nor do they seem as unwilling to “peep” about it as you suggest.) In fact, it’s only very recently that sexist remarks about men began to be considered more socially acceptable than sexist remarks about women. And you can still find gazillions of examples of anti-woman disparagement on the web, such as lists of [ways that coffee is better than a woman](http://chris.pirillo.com/coffee-is-better-than-a-woman/), [ways that a beer is better than a woman](http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88q4/15092.html), [ways that a video game is better than a woman](http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/cvg/vg_v_wmn.html), et cetera, ad nauseam. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/78 "2009-05-15T01:01:37Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > If “gay” as a generic pejorative does reach a point of being so dissociated from gays as a group that most people who use it have no idea of the connection, then I agree with you that those people shouldn’t be chided for it—any more than those who speak about, say, welshing on a debt or vandalizing a building, completely oblivious that those terms were originally derogatory of actual people called Welshmen or Vandals. For what it’s worth, I was using “gay” as a pejorative (but no longer; it sounds gay) long, long before I ever knew what the concept of homosexuality was. Perhaps it’s true that those from who we’d heard it had an inkling, but in all honesty we had no idea. That qualifies under your reasoning, as one could easily educate (as I am now) the users of “welch” and “vandal” and “jew” and “gyp” about the true origin of the word. Heck, I know the origins of all of those, and the only one I don’t use is “jew.” The reason I don’t use “gay” is because it just sounds gay, in the autoreferential sense. I’d be embarrassed to use it not for offending sensibilities (really? offended? I’m still incredulous), but because it simply sounds juvenile. No relation at all to gay people these days. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/79 "2009-05-15T01:24:29Z")
> [@CC](#): > > Disagree. The group that continues to get the most grief and never peeps about it is the group of people called _men_. You won’t find anyone saying “The Irish are so stupid!” “I have to train my Irishman to do what I want him to do.” You won’t find lists circulating on the web of ways a cucumber is better than an Irishman, and if you do, you’ll be hearing about it from someone, you can be sure. Not an ethnic group, per se, but a belittled, derogated, and disrespected group for sure. I was going to say western white man, but IMO you are still pretty close. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145/80 "2009-05-15T01:40:22Z")
What about referring to someone of Asian descent as “Oriental”? That seems to have gone out of vogue and become derogatory. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-chinaman-an-insulting-term/496145.md?page=5)