Qun Hing Chinese Takeaway, Birkenhead (2)

In the United Kingdom, ''chinky'' (or ''chinky chonky'',) is a slur for a

Chinese takeaway A Chinese restaurant is an establishment that serves a Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese style, due to the history of the Chinese diaspora and adapted to local taste preferences, as in the American Chinese cuisine and Canad ...

restaurant or Chinese food and Chinese people. In 2002, the

Broadcasting Standards Commission The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and mail, postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers ...

, after a complaint about the

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...

programme ''

The Vicar of Dibley ''The Vicar of Dibley'' is a British sitcom which originally ran on BBC One from 10 November 1994 to 1 January 2007. It is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1992 changes ...

'', held that when used as the name of a type of restaurant or meal, rather than as an adjective applied to a person or group of people, the word still carries extreme racist connotation which causes offence particularly to those of East Asian origin. In 2004, the commission's counterpart, the

Radio Authority Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

, apologised for the offence caused by an incident where a DJ on Heart 106.2 used the term. In a 2005 document commissioned by

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

titled "Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation" their definition of chink was "a term of racial offence/abuse. However, this is polarising. Older and mainly white groups tend to think this is not usually used in an abusive way—e.g., let's go to the Chinky—which is not seen as offensive by those who aren't of East Asian origin; Chinky usually refers to food not a culture or race however, younger people, East Asians, particularly people of Chinese racial background and other non-white ethnic minorities feel the word 'Chinky, Chinkies or Chinkie' to be as insulting as ' paki' or '

nigger In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...

'." In 2006, after several campaigns by the Scottish Executive, more people in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

now acknowledge that this name is indirectly racist. As of 2016, British broadcasting regulator

considers the word to be "Strongest language, highly unacceptable without strong contextualisation. Seen as derogatory to Chinese people. More mixed views regarding use of the term to mean ‘Chinese takeaway’". In 2014, the term gained renewed attention after a recording emerged of

UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest p ...

candidate Kerry Smith referring to a woman of Chinese background as a "chinky bird".

References

{{ethnic slurs Anti-Chinese sentiment British slang Anti–East Asian slurs English words

See also

References