Sarah Silverman controversy
In July 2001, Guy Aoki became embroiled in a public controversy stemming from his objection to a joke told by comedian
Sarah Silverman, which involved her use of the
ethnic slur "
chink", in an interview on the July 11, 2001 episode of
Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
[5]
In the interview, Silverman explained that a friend had advised her on how to avoid
jury duty by writing a racial slur on the selection form, "something really inappropriate, like, 'I hate chinks'." However, Silverman said that she ultimately decided that she did not want to be thought of as a
racist and instead wrote, "I
love chinks." The
Associated Press quoted Aoki: "There is no excuse for something like this to have made the air. The term is the most offensive possible reference to a person of
Chinese descent."
NBC and
Conan O'Brien issued an apology, but Silverman did not, insisting later on the July 26, 2001 episode of
Politically Incorrect that she did not believe that Aoki was genuinely offended, but exploiting the opportunity for publicity.
[6]
Silverman and Aoki later appeared together on the August 22, 2001 episode of
Politically Incorrect, along with host
Bill Maher and panelists
David Spade and
Anne-Marie Johnson, the latter of whom was chair of the
Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Employment Opportunity Committee. After Silverman repeated the joke for exposition's sake, she opined that it made an implicit statement about the wrongness of
racism, rather than legitimizing it. Johnson, however, questioned the humor in the joke, and Aoki opined that such slurs should not be used in an off-the-cuff manner because it legitimized their use, and that use of the word "chink" was no better than the use of the word "
nigger". Aoki, while acknowledging that
satire was a legitimate practice, asserted that Silverman's execution of it was not successful because it ran the risk that people would assume she actually subscribed to the racist viewpoint of her character.