As a group of friends and I were leaving the casino after KOTC last night, I overheard some guy saying, “There’s a lot of Chinese people here tonight. Lot of Nips.” I just ignored it and kept walking but had there been a confrontation, I wonder what would’ve happened. There were four of us: one was a brown belt and two were advanced blue belts and there was me. We’re all Asian, so I’m guessing that’s what prompted the comment.
I would have politely explained that the term “nip” refers to a Japanese person, whereas a largely Chinese crowd would be more correctly referred to as chinks. And then, depending on his reaction, I would have either smiled and walked away, or offered to chat about semantics and etymology while I walked him to the parking lot.