Is a restaurant by any other name still just a restaurant? Perhaps not for Chink’s Steaks, a cheese-steak eatery in northeast Philadelphia that is fairly well-known among the area’s Asian American community for its controversial, if not outright offensive, namesake. Having already drawn ire for refusing to change the restaurant’s name in 2004, owner Joseph Groh is ruffling feathers again with his recent bid to open another restaurant under the “Chink” brand name.
“OCA and the Asian Pacific American community object to the name because the term ‘Chink’ has a long history as a derogatory term,” said Michael Lin, executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans in Washington, D.C.
Groh doesn’t think so, and some Philadelphians seem to agree with him. Neighborhood residents supported his right to keep the restaurant’s name in 2004.
The question has become one of whether the word “chink” really is a loaded term in the American consciousness. To help settle the issue, Grace Meng, president of the national volunteer group FOCUS, has launched a survey to determine whether “chink” is perceived as offensive.
“It is unacceptable that the owner wants to open another restaurant under this name,” Meng said. “Regardless of his intent years ago, due to the efforts of multiple groups, he now clearly knows that the word ‘chink’ is an ethnic slur. As an American-born and raised Chinese, I have personally been called ‘chink’ in a very offensive and hurtful way.”
Meng targeted two primary groups for her ongoing survey — first-generation Asian immigrants aged 45 to 60, and younger Asian Americans aged 18 to 35 — and received some surprising feedback: Most of her subjects were not offended by Groh’s use of the word. The older group felt the owner had used the name for so long without protest, and the younger group believed Groh did not intend for it to be offensive.
“I was personally surprised that not everyone was offended,” Meng said. “Even if someone uses the word without intention to offend, it is our responsibility as Asian Americans to at least speak up. If we don’t speak up, it is as if we we’re condoning the use of the word.”
Part of the lack of outrage may be due to the perception that the term is not as offensive as other racial slurs, said George C. Wu, assistant director of the Organization of Chinese Americans. “But its impact on the Chinese American and Asian Pacific American community is the same,” Wu said. “I doubt that the owners of the restaurant would have used a term that was equally offensive to another minority community.”
Groh’s defense, as before, is to point out that the restaurant is named after the original owner, Samuel “Chink” Sherman, who apparently got the nickname as a child. But, according to the The Washington Post, when a young Korean American woman called the restaurant in 2004 to enquire about the name, she was told “because the owner had slanty eyes.”
Helen Gym, a board member of the Philadelphia group Asian Americans United, said the word was unquestionably offensive regardless of its provenance. “The owners have steadfastly refused to acknowledge any problems with their name — and that’s their legal right for now,” Gym said. “But the name and the campaign around it have highlighted the ugliness and lingering prejudice against Asian Americans that we still have to fight.”
A History of the Word “Chink”
The origin of the word “chink” as an inflammatory term for Chinese Americans is not widely understood. Although often theorized to be a caricature of the common Chinese phoneme “ching,” the word actually can be traced back to early twentieth-century Alaska, during the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Act, passed in 1882 and lasting for more than sixty years, barred the immigration of Chinese nationals into the United States. Unfortunately, the Chinese population had already become tightly engrained in the working class of the West Coast, and the Act created a labor shortage for several industries in the area, including the Alaskan fishing industry.
In response, a manufacturing company began marketing in 1902 an automatic fish-gutting and cleaning machine, the “Iron Chink,” as a mechanical replacement for Chinese fish market workers. In addition to putting remaining Chinese laborers out of work, the overt reference in the naming of the machine characterized the intense anti-Chinese sentiment of the era.
The use of the word “chink” as a derogatory term for Chinese Americans would continue far after the Exclusion Act expired. As immigrants from other Asian countries arrived in the United States, “chink” became a common insult levied against Asian-Americans, regardless of national origin. A racial slur was born.