I Am Your Chink!
Shopping these days while wearing a face mask, I brace for the instant my visible slanty eyes betray me as Chinese. Reading the news about Asian-Americans getting harassed by people blaming them for the coronavirus, I am wary each time I leave my home in Westhampton, New York. So far, the burly contractors in Carhartt boots I pass in True Value smile at me politely. Still, I can’t help but tense, waiting for some bigot to unleash a torrent of invective my way.
I’ve heard slurs yelled at me before, like, “Ching Chong!” when I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, or, “Go back to China!” when I traveled through Sydney, Australia. Still, the injustice of being targeted for prejudice didn’t make me any less furious or sad. If a stranger were to confront me now and scream, “You chink!” and that the pandemic was my fault, how would I respond?
In August 2019, on the first day of class, my Introduction to Creative Writing students at Stony Brook University read aloud Marina Keegan’s valedictory speech to her graduating class at Yale. Five days after the ceremony, Ms. Keegan died in a car accident.
My students’ first assignment was to write about legacy. What do you say to someone you might not see again?
At our next session, the first reader began reciting his essay. Two paragraphs in, he uttered the N-word.
Startled, I listened closely, trying to understand why my black student called himself this to describe one of his two identities. The first was that of a young black man uncomfortable deferring to white authority, namely, that “honky” professor he had addressed the piece to who couldn’t see past the color of his skin. The second was his alter ego, the painful slur demeaning to African Americans yet prolific in hip-hop music and everyday language. Calling someone an N-word signifies that person deserves “props” or credibility.
I realized my student called himself the N-word because he was proud to be black. Yet, I was shell shocked by the quiet detonation the word made, how saying two simple syllables could convey an entire history of oppression as well as self-respect.
When Walter Mosley wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times the next month, “Why I Quit the Writer’s Room,” I seized the opportunity for a teachable moment and asked my class to read it out loud. Mr. Mosley was reprimanded by Human Resources at a network he worked for because he had used the N-word in conversation to explain a story about a cop he knew who “stopped all niggers in paddy neighborhoods and all paddies in nigger neighborhoods, because they were usually up to no good.”
“Does anyone know what the term ‘paddy’ means?” I asked.
No one raised their hand.
I explained to my uninformed students, since immigrants began arriving in America, many were called racist names. A paddy is an Irishman. A wop, an Italian. A kike, a Jew. An N-word is a slur for blacks. A chink, I said gesturing to myself, is someone Chinese.
“So, class, who gets to use the N-word?”
Everyone pointed to my black student.
“Why?”
“Because he’s black?” someone guessed.
“Because, as Mr. Mosley says, ‘I am the N-word.’ Mr. Mosley quit because he wasn’t allowed to use the word to describe himself. To be black is to personify everything the word means! The history of slavery. Of Jim Crow. Of suppression.” Turning to the blackboard, I wrote — in big bold letters — a phrase from Mr. Mosley’s piece. Speak. Your. Truth.
“As students and writers, your goal is to use language to express yourself. Words inspire. Words electrify. Words can also hurt. I support each of you to speak your truth, so long as you do so respectfully.”
I recalled this advice when I recently watched Ronny Chieng do his standup routine, “Asian Comedian Destroys America” on Netflix. In it, he extols the badassery of black Americans owning their racial slur, the same way my black student dignified using the N-word to proclaim himself worthy.
“You never see Chinese people walking around (saying), ‘Yo, where my chinks at? My chinks!’” Mr. Chieng jokes.
In these difficult times, I remind my fellow Asian Americans and less-friendly neighbors, no matter what words are hurled at us, we chinks know we are worthy.
If someone wants to call me a chink, I’d remind them, “Hey! We’re all in this together!” But if they ignore my appeal for community, I would disarm them using their own words of hate. Dubbing myself that weighted moniker, I’d declare my allegiance to the tribe of nearly 20% of the planet, whose ancestors invented papermaking, gunpowder, the compass and General Tso’s Chicken.
I would yell back, “Yo! I am your Chink! So, you take care of yourself, and stay safe!”
