Promoting Diversity in Affluent White America

How One Word Sparked a Crisis

A poorly chosen word recently sparked a social media war in an affluent East Coast town. A local yoga studio owner wrote a Social Media post in which she used the word “chinky” to self-effacingly describe her eye shape. She is, to the best of my knowledge, a white woman, and not of Asian heritage.

The subtext that “chinky” aka Asian features were undesirable came across as tone-deaf and insulting, and her Social Media followers attacked her for the word choice. Rather than delete the post and…