We Never Sleep: February 2009

Racial slurs have never been more delicious!

From the daily news:

Chink's Steaks is a Philadelphia institution which has operated for over a half century from a modest store in the Philly neighborhood of Wissinoming. Now, rather than some of the best cheesesteaks in the city, it finds itself serving up controversy as a result of its culturally insensitive name. Culturally insensitive in the mind of Susannah Park, who has taken the name as a cultural and ethnic slam almost from the first moment she heard it. Culturally insensitive in the mind of the head of the local branch of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is pressing the owner of the store to change its name.

Chink's was opened back in 1949 by Samuel "Chink" Sherman who operated it up until his death in 1997. Park, who doesn't live close to the store and had never heard of it before, was first informed of the name about two months ago. She attempted to contact the store's current owner Joseph Groh who passed on a meeting. She then took her concern to the ADL, and they and a few other community groups are trying to impress Groh on the urgent need to change the name of the store. Groh is quite adamant however that, as a store which has been operated openly with the name Chink's for over fifty years, he sees little need to change anything:

"It's been here 55 years and no one has ever questioned it. Everybody's welcome here. I know there's a lot of racist people in the world but I'm not one of them."

This is not how some activists see it. According to a spokesperson for the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, there is no way that the word is not offensive to those of Asian extraction: "If you replace 'chink' with any other racial epithet, people understand it very clearly. For some reason, when it's an Asian derogatory term, people don't get it." But, it's the name of the person who founded the store is essentially the defense given by Groh and Sherman's widow. That's because Samuel Sherman had been given the nickname of "Chink" when he was a young man and, according to Mrs. Sherman, his funeral was the first time anyone knew his real first name. Besides, Groh says that changing the name would ruin his business, as the store had received honors for being one of the best cheesesteak restaurants in Philly under the name "Chink's". One of the aspects of Sam Sherman's history might make the case for Park and the ADL a bit more compelling; Sherman got the nickname because of his "slanty eyes" according to his widow.