If we can ban the n-word, can we ban anti-Asian slurs?

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

The latest issue of Pacific Citizen includes an article titled N-Word vs. J-Word that asks, “There’s a national movement to abolish the use of the N-Word. Can a similar effort be launched for racist terms directed at the Asian American community?” There are a couple quotes from yours truly:

So is it about time for the AA community to run a similar campaign, an “Abolish the J-word” grassroots movement? Many think it’s a good idea, in concept, but whether it would work is highly sketchy.

“The reason there’s such a debate over the N-word is because it has, to some degree, been reclaimed by black people. The N-word doesn’t exist solely as a racial slur – it is used in many different contexts, with many different meanings,” said Carmen Van Kerckhove, president of New Demographic, an anti-racism training company. “That same ambiguity doesn’t exist with anti-Asian slurs like ‘Jap,’ ‘Chink’ and ‘Gook.’ As far as I know, there aren’t many Asian Americans who have reclaimed these words to use as terms of endearment amongst themselves.”

…”It has a lot to do with the way history is taught in our schools. We’re all familiar (at least in broad terms) with the history of slavery and the struggle for civil rights. But few of us learn about the long history of anti-Asian discrimination in this country,” said Van Kerckhove. “As a results, words like ‘Chink’ and ‘Jap’ and ‘ching chong’ aren’t recognized as having the same kind of historical context of oppression as words like ‘N-word.’”