Chink

Chink (also chinki, chinky, chinkie, or chinka) is an English-language ethnic slur usually referring to a person of Chinese ethnicity. The word is also sometimes indiscriminately used against people of East Asian appearance. Use of the term is often considered offensive and has garnered a great deal of media attention.

A number of dictionaries have provided different suggestions as to the origin of chink. Some of these suggestions are that it originated from the Chinese courtesy ching-ching, or that it evolved from the word China, or that it was an alteration of Qing (Ch'ing), as in the Qing Dynasty.

Another possible etymology is that chink evolved from the Indo-Iranian word for China, that word now having similar pronunciations in various Indo-European languages, such as Persian.

Chink's first usage is recorded from about 1880 but chinky had first appeared in print, as far as can be ascertained, in 1878.Chinky is still used in Britain as a nickname for Chinese food.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Chinese immigration was perceived as a threat to the living standards of whites in North America and other similar nations. However, a persistent labour shortage on the west coast meant that Chinese workers were still needed there. Alaskan fish canneries were so short of workers, too, that appeals were submitted to Congress to amend the Exclusion Act. Chinese butcher crews were held in such high esteem that when Edmund A. Smith patented his mechanized fish-butchering machine in 1905, he named it the Iron Chink, which is seen by some as symbolic of anti-Chinese racism during the era. Usage of the word continued, such as with the story "The Chink and the Child" by Thomas Burke, later adapted to film by D.W. Griffith. Griffith altered the story to be more racially sensitive and renamed it to Broken Blossoms.

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