 | ||
In the United Kingdom, chinky (or chinky chonky, in parts of northern England known as a chinkies, always in the plural) is a slang name for a Chinese takeaway restaurant or the meal that one buys from such a restaurant. However, along with 'chink', they are named among TV's Most offensive words.
After several campaigns by the Scottish Executive, more people in Scotland now acknowledge that this name is indirectly racist. However, the Broadcasting Standards Commission held in 2002, after a complaint about the BBC One programme The Vicar of Dibley, 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 carries no racist connotation.
In a document commissioned by OFCOM 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; younger groups and those from ethnic minorities feel this could be as insulting as 'paki' or 'nigger'."
However, a year earlier, the Commission's counterpart, the Radio Authority, apologised for the offence caused by an incident where a DJ on Heart 106.2 used the term. Ofcom, the successor organisation of the two, classifies it as a derivative of the racist term "chink" but notes that the degree to which the term is deemed offensive varies according to age or ethnic origin of the listener.
The term gained renewed attention in 2014 after it a recording emerged of UKIP candidate Kerry Smith referring to a woman of Chinese background as a "chinky bird".