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Racist, or just a joke?

Should ESPN have fired the writer?


  • Total voters
    35
Probably all right to smack them with a shovel, but probably not all right to hit them with a spade, which is what a shovel was called when I was growing up.

A chink has described a small tear or hole in something for hundreds of years. A chink in the armor was a weak spot that would be penetrated by a sword.
The holes between logs in a log house were chinks, and filling those holes with mud was chinking.

I saw the headline and didn't think anything of it. I doubt if the writer did either. But then I don't get up each morning and hunt for a reason to be offended. Time to lighten up.

1. I didn't know chink came from the eyes. I thought it was a variation on 'Chinese'.
2. What kind of a braindead asswipe would choose that title and not notice something funny.
 
An over-reaction to a remark. The writer should be given the benefit of the doubt. Crap rolls downhill and rests on the shoulders at the bottom. In this case, the writer. His bosses should be fired for not supporting him.
 
An over-reaction to a remark. The writer should be given the benefit of the doubt. Crap rolls downhill and rests on the shoulders at the bottom. In this case, the writer. His bosses should be fired for not supporting him.

Fagan and I agree on something? Stop the presses... I am about to have a heart attack...
 
Lets not be so-hyper sensitive, man is far, far from being perfect, and he may never become this way.
Yes! The writer was not fully sensitive , he is a man, not a machine.
IMO, we all need to be more tolerant.
 
That's it. People arguing that the writer didn't know damn well he was making a joke is too much.
 
It was a smart business decision to fire him, but that's because the population at large is hypersensitive. When are we going to around to becoming a colorblind society and thinking about race like we do eye color?
This may take a thousand years ! Of course, many of us are on this track of advancement, but it is a slow moving train with no shortage of impediments.
Rather disturbing is the 30% of responders here who, IMO, are intolerant (expecting man to be "perfect".)
Then, of course, there is much we do not know , maybe ESPN know the writer to be a "jerk" and this was the straw, the last straw.
 
When did I say people have to censor themselves? I said, "the reality [is] that people who are aware of the word's racially charged connotation are not necessarily sensitive." That's my only point. I'm not talking about others having to censor themselves. Have you got this in your head yet? Why are you putting words in my mouth? Is it that difficult to address ONLY what was said and not project whatever baggage you brought into this thread all over my post?


Who ****ing cares about Cinderella?

Once again, you assert that racial sensitivities are somehow important and the feminist sensitivities (ie Cinderella) are not. You still disregard the potential effects of your signature which is based on stereotyping, you sir are a person who is not "aware of the word's racially(Insert any offensive accusation here) charged connotation are not necessarily sensitive"
 
So you are saying there are various levels of racism and what should or should not be accepted? I mean is there some Top 5 list and if that race falls below it then it is ok to spew racism towards them or something?:confused::doh Racism is Racism and it does not matter if you were really oppressed or oppressed just a little bit. None of it is cool. Give me a break. :(

I've thought about it and think you're absolutely right (though you made up the part about me thinking that racism in any form was acceptable).
 
How can people assume that it was not racist? I guess it is a YMMV kind of thing. When it comes to hate and racism? I would rather err on the side of caution than to take someone at that their word that it was just a harmless joke or was taking out of context. Do you REALLY think they are gonna admit it if was racist? Of course not. Come on now.

This is what I feel like the real issue is. Everyone wants to err on the side of caution and shout RACISM! To me it isn't a matter of them admitting it is racism because it is not just one person. Don't think that a writer for ESPN can just write an article and put in online without going through a chain of people. And ALL of those people are okay with a racist headline? I just can't imagine that many people okaying anything purposely racist. To be fair, I don't know much about the business and can't for certain put a number on how many people this article went through, but I am absolutely sure it was more than one.
 
This is what I feel like the real issue is. Everyone wants to err on the side of caution and shout RACISM! To me it isn't a matter of them admitting it is racism because it is not just one person. Don't think that a writer for ESPN can just write an article and put in online without going through a chain of people. And ALL of those people are okay with a racist headline? I just can't imagine that many people okaying anything purposely racist. To be fair, I don't know much about the business and can't for certain put a number on how many people this article went through, but I am absolutely sure it was more than one.

I been curious about the same thing since you all pointed it out to me. Wondering how many people saw it before it went live too. I am clueless about how all this works and since it was a ticker wonder if maybe they can just put in whatever? That would be crazy. I would love to know exactly how many people had to read it and appprove it to air.

I still find it racist and if several folks had to read before it was a go? Well fire their ass too. I am still going on my theory it was a drunk night or something. No excuse though cause it came out of the fired ones head & heart and he has to own it. But if others approved it to be there? They should get in trouble too:(
 
This "Chink in the armor" wasn't racist. But this is.



The difference between real racism, and people trying to find racism.
 
This "Chink in the armor" wasn't racist. But this is.



The difference between real racism, and people trying to find racism.


Actually, that was precisely the commercial that made me rethink my previous post. We need to be very careful of any pattern that dehumanizes an entire people. When this begins to happen systematically things can get really ugly.

Just ask some of the residents of Anoka, Minnesota.
 
Or they could have just used the expression and not think about the racial implications. It's easy to miss stuff like this if your not thinking about race IMO.

Star, as much as I'd like to believe you, there is a team of people working at most newspapers, magazines etc. making sure anything that could be interpreted as racist is removed. If they miss it, my experience is that it's because A) it wasn't caught by the editor first or B) a 3rd party was involved in it's creation.

Case in point for this is the work of people like Annie Leibovitz. A few years ago she had an image of LeBron James angrily holding a white supermodel. Now personally I didn't think it was racist but some interpreted it as such. Then last year the company Nivea hired an advertising agency to come up with a new campaign that essentially made a black man with dreads look bad while a clean cut black male looked good. Again, I didn't think it was necessarily racist but it could have been interpreted as such if certain parameters were applied.

Now, with all that said, I think the whole "Chink in the Armor Thing" is probably the work of some editor who thought it'd be funny because kids on the internet probably used it. It ended up backfiring horribly because people on the internet don't read newspapers and not because people are oversensitive. It also probably backfired because "chink" actually carries weight in the American lexicon much in the way wop, guinea, nigger or kike do. If a word is historically charged, it's far more likely that use of it in the right racial context will insult people.
 
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Star, as much as I'd like to believe you, there is a team of people working at most newspapers, magazines etc. making sure anything that could be interpreted as racist is removed. If they miss it, my experience is that it's because A) it wasn't caught by the editor first or B) a 3rd party was involved in it's creation.
True, all media from newspapers to television have a department of standards or else the editor or another manager makes the call. Nothing goes out without their approval. As well they order and authorize re-writes and edits. The reason this is a tough call is the "chink in the armor" saying is old and in cliched usage, it could well be that it didn't register than Lin being asian and the word could be interpreted. It could be that an off color joke slipped through, and it's also possible they did have bad intent and thought it would go unnoticed. Who knows really on this one?
 
Racist.
" ..."Chink in the armor" was ESPN's take not once but twice when the Knicks lost a game last week, both as a headline added by ESPN writer Anthony Federico and then as a phrase used by the anchor Max Bretos (Federico has since been fired and Bretos received a 30-day suspension.) Those two muppets look the height of sophisticated decorum compared with Foxsports.com writer Jason Whitlock, whose response to Lin's triumph over the Lakers on Friday night was to tweet "Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight", a comment notable for being almost more misogynistic than racist. When the Madison Square Garden Network flashed up a photo of Lin, it superimposed it with a fortune cookie, presumably refraining from adding some chopsticks purely because it didn't have the graphics...

...Racism in sport is nothing new, as anyone familiar with English football could tell you. But Lin's high-profile success has highlighted a different problem, that of racism against Asian Americans in general. While no one would claim that racism against black people is no longer a problem in America, it is unthinkable that any news network or even half-brained TV presenter would use racial slurs against a black player equivalent to the Asian ones that have been used against Lin. This is because racism against Asians is not confronted as much and therefore is somehow seen as more acceptable – not even racist, even.... "

Jeremy Lin row reveals deep-seated racism against Asian Americans | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | The Guardian
 
The "lucky lady" thing is so backwards, I find it difficult to believe. Someone with a job above college student level wrote that? He was drunk and thought it was funny? His poor wife.
 
This reminds me of a stupid joke I heard once. These two G.I.'s wake up in their fox hole as the suns coming up and see a Japanese Zero flying overhead. One shivers and says to the other, hmmm, little nip in the air this morning. Sorry I just had too.
 
When the Madison Square Garden Network flashed up a photo of Lin, it superimposed it with a fortune cookie, presumably refraining from adding some chopsticks purely because it didn't have the graphics...

Considering that fortune cookies were invented in Jeremy Lin's hometown, it was perhaps fitting...
 
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