So here's this thread

[conuly]

In which this teacher earnestly wants a word to substitute for "chink" in Midsummer Night's Dream, and one person suggests kink which doesn't mean the same thing.

And on the one hand, I'm sure they all have their hearts in the right place, but on the other hand, maybe they should collectively teach a different play instead. Shakespeare wrote plenty of comedies, just pick a different one off the shelf.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Wait till the kids start sniggering at "hole."

[conuly]

I’m sure Will would approve.

[adrian_turtle]

I perceive a difference between students hearing sexual innuendo, and hearing what sounds like a racist slur against a classmate. I'm not thinking about the author's intent, though clearly Shakespeare intended for that particular play to have lots of sexual innuendo. High school teachers these days don't just teach "Othello" without extensive framing about 17th century race relations, and they treat "Merchant of Venice" like it's radioactive. And middle schoolers performing a play are even less able to find mature perspective than high schoolers studying it.

[ethelmay]

It wouldn't have occurred to me to worry about it, any more than about the gravedigger's spade in Hamlet. And there are words I avoid because they sound like slurs - the infamous synonym of "miserly" for one.

But I have assumed (and I could be wrong about this, especially given current trends in racist rhetoric) that as a racist term "Chink" had mostly disappeared - nearly as much as "spade" has.

[isis]

This brought me back to my (very long-ago) high school days, in which the drama class teacher decided to change the "spade" references in the following passage:

CECILY.
Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.

GWENDOLEN.
[Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

to "I call them as I see them." / "It is obvious that you don't see very well."

Of course, this was in the 1970s, when "spade" (in the racist sense) was perhaps more common - and, saliently, the girl playing Gwendolen was black :-)

[redbird]

The production I just saw, with a Black Gwendolen, left the text unchanged--and the gardener standing nearby, carrying a large spade. But that's a lot easier to do in a professional production, with a budget for scenery, impressive costumes, and props.

[jack]

And people suggesting "just" changing it to another word which doesn't rhyme! That might work, but it didn't feel like an obvious suggestion.

And I was surprised to realise that there might be people for whom the slur is the main or only meaning they know, but I realise, I've no real way of knowing if that's a tiny fraction of people or a majority of people.

[adrian_turtle]

They're talking about 13-year-olds, who work from a more limited perspective and knowledge base than adults.

[conuly]

But does their more limited knowledge base even include the offensive meaning nowadays?

[ioplokon]

Reading that thread, it sounds like the teacher is currently in a situation where their actual students are giggling about "chink" because they know it is a racial slur, which does seem like it needs to be addressed directly and promptly, though?

[crystalpyramid]

It 100% needs to be addressed but maybe it's more like you'd need to address kids being weird about "negro" or "niger, -um, -a" in a language class? It's not like you can change Spanish or Latin to avoid the problem.

And as much as you can try to help kids in class understand the nuance, you can't perform this to an audience you haven't had class time with. My previous job had a problem where they'd talk extensively about real racism in their old scripts but then perform to an audience without the same context.

[ethelmay]

I went back and looked and it wasn't clear if they were actually giggling or it was hypothetical. If they actually were it would make sense to take action. But if they don't KNOW the slur meaning, I wouldn't go out of my way to TEACH it to them. The slur dying out is a good thing.

[zavodilaterrarium]

I can understand the interpretation of chink and kink being similar (a ‘flaw’ could be a hole in some contexts), though it’s certainly not something I’d worry about changing unless there is a reason for a specific community to be wary (like past incidents with racism). Where I live, chink is known to be racist but isn’t really used, so I imagine the reactions would mostly be confusion rather than offence from those who don’t know or remember the other meanings. It’s one of those words that I sort of consider normal vocab even though I haven’t seen it in use in a while and don’t use it often myself, like the term ‘smackdab’ and its variants.

[swingandswirl]

Okay, so I am Asian, but not the kind of Asian that 'chink' applies to as a slur, so take this with a sackful of salt.

That... is one of the most asinine takes I have seen in a while. Treat your students like the brain-having individuals they are, explain that 'chink' is another term for hole/defect/chip, what have you.

This is giving the same energy as the time Scholastic changed the vocabulary on the US editions of the HP books because they thought American kids would be put off by such esoteric terms as 'jumper'.

[moon_custafer]

Yeah. It's pretty clearly *not* being used as a racial slur in that scene (the wall's intro literally specifies that he's talking about a small hole).

And if the concern is the kids interpreting the line in bad faith so they can snicker (I say this as someone whose high-school production substituted the word 'spirit' for every instance in the script of the word 'fairy)? 'Kink' is really not going to help.

[smokingboot]

Well said. The dumbing down is painful.

[conuly]

This is giving the same energy as the time Scholastic changed the vocabulary on the US editions of the HP books because they thought American kids would be put off by such esoteric terms as 'jumper'.

Well... given that "jumper" in the USA is a pinafore dress and in the UK is a sweater, I think that particular change was well-warranted.

[ethelmay]

I don't think it's asinine to ASK whether hearing repeated "chinks" has the same "wait, that sounds like..." horrible feeling as hearing "niggardly" (which, as I said above, I do avoid, because it makes me jump). Lowercase "chink" isn't filed that way in my brain, but it might be for someone who was, say, getting taunted during the height of Covid, when a lot of racists were spouting anti-Chinese crap.

[kaffy_r]

Middle school students, especially the ones at the Grade 7 or 8 level, are old enough to understand what "chink" means, or that it has dual/multiple means. I used to cover school districts as a reporter, and I often did features on projects wherein the kids tackled some pretty nuanced and potentially controversial concepts and issues.

If you have a class reading Shakespeare plays, I can almost guarantee that there are words or phrases that would cause consternation or confusion. I hate to sound flippant, but this is the same kind of "teachable moment" that reading Shakespeare at this age will always require. Build it into your class plans.

I realize that I'm not a teacher, and I don't fully understand the weight of expectations and planning that teachers have to shoulder, but this sounds more like this teacher's projecting her own discomfort onto her students, which is unfair to them, and she should get over herself.

[silveradept]

I... no. If you want to worry about racism in Shakespeare, you have plenty more opportunities, including in that play, to have a discussion about it. When Shakespeare wants someone to be a racist, he doesn't do it subtly.

Because racists will always adopt some piece of regular language to have that additional meaning and code to it, there's no way of excluding the language, only bringing the hammer when it's being used in the racist way.