The Wall Street Journal Done Goofed

I was one of the few Asian-Americans in the small suburb of Detroit that I grew up in. I still remember multiple instances in which other little boys would walk up to me and ask, “Your eyes are so small, are you blind or something?” They might as well have been hurling a slur at me – “chink.”

Well, that’s just an ugly word. But somehow, the Wall Street Journal never got that memo. For those unfamiliar with the story, the Wall Street Journal recently tweeted a link to a story about the President of China, Xi Jinping, with the caption “A chink in his armor? Xi Jinping looks vulnerable for the first time.” The tweet was deleted and a non-apology was subsequently posted, “We recently removed a tweet on our Xi Jinping article because a common idiom might be seen as a slur. No offense was intended.” Belying that statement, no major disciplinary action was taken at the Wall Street Journal. Regardless of intentions, the damage had been done. Language matters in political writing, and the Wall Street Journal ignored that in order to score a cheap joke.

Normally that particular idiom is fairly innocuous, with Dictionary.com defining the expression as “a vulnerable area.” Its usage dates back to the 1600s; however, when it is used in conjunction with a person of Chinese descent, it takes on a pejorative meaning.

That derogatory definition of “chink” is derived from a corruption of the word “China,” as well as from the stereotypical Western image of Chinese people as having narrow eyes (stemming from an original definition of “chink” as a “gap”). Some consider it to be as offensive to Chinese-Americans as the n-word is to African-Americans.

This is not the first time that a similar incident has occurred. Perhaps the most notable incident was back in 2012, when ESPN ran an article about a New York Knicks basketball game with a large picture of Jeremy Lin, the basketball player, and the headline “Chink in the Armor.” In reference to the same basketball game, an ESPN commentator used the same phrase on-air shortly before the article was published. The anchor was suspended and the employee responsible for the headline was fired.

There is, however, a nuance to the matter. “Chink in the armor” is an entirely acceptable, inoffensive phrase if it were to be used in a context not involving Asian-Americans. Some Chinese-Americans, like Eddie Huang, who created a sitcom called "Fresh Off the Boat" centering around an Asian-American family, believe that “chink” has been reclaimed in a similar fashion to the way the n-word has been reclaimed for African-Americans. The idea is that those members of the in-group can reclaim the word and divorce it from its offensive connotations when it is used within the group. Huang, for instance, refers to himself as a chink in a self-deprecating way in his writing. However, it is still unacceptable for those outside the group to use it, given the word’s loaded meaning and legacy of racial hatred.

“Chink in the armor” is a phrase that should not be entirely retired, but at the end of the day, it’s still entirely inappropriate to use it when referring to Asians or Asian-Americans. To use it, even in an idiom, in the context of a person of Asian descent requires shocking levels of idiocy.

It’s simply unacceptable for this to have transpired, especially in reference to one of the most powerful men on the planet. The Wall Street Journal might as well have directly used the slur against him, and one wonders how many different levels of authority the decision to run that caption had to go through before publication. The Wall Street Journal, as one of our nation’s leading newspapers, needs toissue a formal apology and discipline those responsible.