A derogatory term

SIR — I refer to Michael Schmidt’s article in Business Day (September 21 2016) on the 2016 African Aerospace and Defence exhibition 2016 (“AAD”).

The phrase “chink in one’s armour” refers to vulnerability, weakness and is similar to that of an “Achilles’ heel”. It is no secret that China holds a leading position as an investor in Africa and there were many high-profile Chinese companies exhibiting at the AAD.

Of all the idiotic, insensitive headlines to a story about an international exhibition that was well-represented by China, which invests heavily into Africa and which enjoys the closest political ties, that headline must rank top of the list.

How could Business Day not have known that “chink” is a derogatory racist word for Chinese? According to the Power Thesaurus, there are some 71 synonyms that could have been used to describe the fragility that Schmidt purports to report upon. Why use that particular one? Did the person checking the headline not realise that the article, which refers to several Chinese exhibitors, contains a highly offensive and racist word?

Perhaps the people concerned thought that the headline was punny, even funny. In apartheid SA, it would be. But we have moved on. The headline was distasteful in the extreme.

In 2012, ESPN of Fox News fired the editor, Anthony Frederico, responsible for an offensive headline referring to Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin — a Chinese American basketball star — under the headline “Chink in the armor (sic)”. There is a precedent for retiring offensive-sounding words from everyday usage, e.g. gollywog and niggardly. China is no longer the “sick man of Asia”, but a world power. The phrase “chink in the armour” no longer has a place.