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Them’s Talking Words

Here’s the burning question of the week: What do we mean when we say “chink?”

If you’re offended, curious, or otherwise intrigued by the word, then read on. I’ll be using it several times in this column, not as a “fighting word,” but as a matter of reporting, and free speech.

I certainly won’t be calling it the “C” word.

The issue arises because I happened to open up an e-mail sent to me by activists concerning the urgent matter of the Idaho Geographic Names Advisory Council. Also known by the acronym IGNAC, the council has decided that a mountain near Pocatello, Idaho, should keep its current name, Chinks Peak.

I thought it was a joke.

It’s not.

And by the way, that’s not a possessive “S.” We couldn’t possibly own the peak. No, it’s “chinks” with a plural “S.” Something for us all to marvel at, a natural monument and constant reminder of racial hatred. Just what we need in the land of the free. It makes up for no Asians on Mt. Rushmore.

If you haven’t heard of the whole thing, shall we make what has heretofore been a molehill into the mountain it deserves to be?

Last November, IGNAC defended its actions saying that renaming Chinks Peak would essentially deface history.

Deface? Or rub in our noses a shameful part of the past when Chinese laborers were exploited in Idaho and degraded by the epithet?

Yes, let’s proudly remember that.

IGNAC also argued that Chinks Peak might have been named for a Chinese family.

Can’t you just imagine such a family walking down mainstreet Pocatello at the turn of the century, waving to their spud farming neighbors who turn to their buddies by the checker barrel and say , “There goes Bob and Sally Chink, they’re good people. Some day we’ll name that big hill over there for them.”?

Unlikely.

And then, of course, IGNAC used what I call the “chinks in the armor” defense. This is the defense that hides behind all those OTHER definitions for the word “chink,” not the one used as a description of Chinese people or things Chinese. I suppose one could imagine that the original namers of Chinks Peak, admiring the geological structure noticed the cracks and fissures in the rock and were moved to descriptive heights. “My, what a massive abutment with all those fine, interesting chinks.”

Unlikely.

As you can see, it does boil down to “What do you mean when you say ‘chink?’”

Leading the pan-Asian charge to help IGNAC come to its senses has been the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).

In the email to me, activists circulated a letter from John Tateishi, National Executive Director of the JACL, dated Jan. 2. It was addressed to Roger L. Payne, Executive Secretary of the U.S. Board of Geographic Names in Reston, Virginia. Tateishi’s letter brought up the Board of Geographic Names’ own policy where it declares it “will not adopt a name for Federal usage that is determined by the Board to be derogatory to a particular racial or ethnic group, gender or religious group.” Tateishi pointed out that we wouldn’t see a “Jap” Peak. Or a “Nigger” Peak.

The mild uproar at the beginning of the year has now forced IGNAC to open up new hearings on the matter, hence the e-mail. People are being encouraged to write the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, 523 National Center, Reston, VA 20192.

Certainly, readers of this column know what “chink” means to them. Whether you are Chinese or not, if you’re of Asian ancestry you’ve been stung by the epithet at some point. To the ignorant, it’s our default epithet. Chinks Peak? This mountain is no molehill. Activists, go amok!

Which brings me to the other bit of “chink” news of the week, this concerning my Lampoon brother Conan O’Brien.

O’Brien was called on the oriental carpet, as it were, and forced to apologize for a joke uttered on his show July 11.

The comedian Sarah Silverman was bantering on the show about filling out racial boxes on jury duty forms.

“My friend is like, ‘Why don’t you write something inappropriate on the form like, “I hate chinks,’” Silverman said. But she didn’t want to be thought a racist, she said, so “I just filled out the form and I wrote ‘I love chinks’ — and who doesn’t?”

In joke terms, it’s a classic flipper. The old switcheroo. It’s funny. But to Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, it was a shock.

Aoki’s group, the long time watchdog of these issues, got a sympathetic ear from Scott Sassa, the west coast president of NBC, himself an Asian American.

Sassa declared the joke didn’t meet the standards and practices of the network and apologized. O’Brien apologized this week in remarks to visiting television critics in Pasadena.

Aoki was appeased, but wanted an on-air apology. I’d prefer to see an all-Asian American comedy showcase sometime on O’Brien’s show.

Silverman, in the meantime, hasn’t exactly apologized for anything. She’s quoted as saying her joke intended to satirize “the ignorance people demonstrate when they employ racial epithets.”

I actually buy that. But she went even further.

In an e-mail to Aoki, Silverman reportedly wrote: “You have garnered much attention by exploiting my joke and my name, I would have preferred to talk seriously and honestly about how to address the real challenges to a good society.”

Unfortunately, I doubt that before this Silverman would have answered inquiries to be on an Asian American Journalist Association panel on Asian images in media. (There’s one next week in San Francisco, Sarah, if you’re ire interested). Silverman’s response, however, is the only reasonable outcome when “chink” is uttered in public. Instead of censorship, it should open a dialogue. They’re not fighting words. They’re talking words.

Emil Guillermo’s book Amok, won an American Book Award 2000. He hosts NCM-TV’s The New America Now on PBS stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. E-mail: emil@amok.com