{"id":45359,"date":"2012-03-01T12:33:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T17:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=45359"},"modified":"2012-04-23T21:02:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T02:02:32","slug":"jeremy-lin-espn-says-has-a-chink-in-the-armor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/03\/01\/jeremy-lin-espn-says-has-a-chink-in-the-armor\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Lin, ESPN Says, has a “Chink in the Armor”"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The Color Line<\/a>, sociologist C.N. Le highlighted an instance in which racist language was used in reference to pro-basketball player Jeremy Lin. \u00a0A headline at ESPN read, “Chink in the Armor.” \u00a0“Chink” is a term used to denigrate the Chinese and Asians more generally.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nLe observes astutely that the word likely wasn’t meant as a slur, but instead a pun. \u00a0And, in fact, ESPN “quickly and decisively” took action, changing the headline, firing the person who wrote the headline, and suspending a sportscaster who repeated the phrase.<\/p>\n

Instead of outright racism, Le suggests that the appearance of the word is symptomatic of a (false) belief that we’re in a colorblind post-power society. \u00a0In this society, every group is on equal footing, so making fun is just equal opportunity offensiveness; it may be off-color, but it’s all in good fun (think of South Park as an example). \u00a0The approach assumes that slurs like “chink” are no more harmful than slurs like “cracker.”<\/p>\n

Le was disappointed to see that this kind of ongoing insensitivity to real power differences remains, but pleased to see ESPN react so swiftly and strongly to it.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The Color Line, sociologist C.N. Le highlighted an instance in which racist language was used in reference to pro-basketball player Jeremy Lin. \u00a0A headline at ESPN read, “Chink in the Armor.” \u00a0“Chink” is a term used to denigrate the Chinese and Asians more generally. Le observes astutely that the word likely wasn’t meant as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,283,285,1759,108],"class_list":["post-45359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-media","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46401,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45359\/revisions\/46401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}