Inquirer Editorial: Defending the indefensible

Once a racial slur has been uttered, the proper response is a subject for reasonable debate. Those defending the slur itself, however, have left the realm of reason behind.

Take Joe's Steaks and Soda Shop in Philadelphia's Wissinoming section - formerly, and famously, called Chink's. The cheesesteak joint got its curious name from its original owner, Samuel "Chink" Sherman, a white man known by the anti-Asian epithet on account of his "slanty eyes," as his widow once put it.

Reasonable people could and did disagree about when it was time to update the half-century-old name to reflect current standards of tolerance. Chink's attracted occasional bouts of protest from Asian Americans and others starting in 2004, as well as resistance from its current owner, Joe Groh, and other traditionalists. Last spring, however, Groh decided that after 35 years of working at the shop and more than a decade as its proprietor, it was time for a new name - namely, his own.

What's remarkable is that rather than accepting the decision Groh made of his own volition and under no immediate pressure, a significant portion of the shop's customers accused him of "caving" or "giving in" - as if the use of a racial slur represented an important principle. An online petition in favor of retaining the old, offensive name got 10,000 signatures.

This week, the Daily News' Stu Bykofsky reported that the steak shop had seen its business drop by 10 and 15 percent over the past two months, perhaps partly because of the backlash. Vandals have painted the old name on the property twice, the columnist reported, and one angry old woman even ate a sandwich there before telling Groh, "You still make me sick."

The spectacle of a sandwich seller being punished for displaying a modicum of racial sensitivity is reminiscent of some of the more retrograde reactions to Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper's recent use of a racial slur at a country music concert. Whether the fine Cooper will pay the Eagles is a fitting punishment is up for debate. Whether Cooper's behavior itself is defensible should be a much easier question.

And yet there has been no shortage of letters to the editor and online comments defending the athlete's use of the slur - which Cooper himself immediately and profusely apologized for - as somehow justifiable. One favorite argument of this faction relies on free-speech rights, which grossly confuses constitutional protection from government sanction - which neither Cooper nor Groh has ever faced, and rightly so - with the absurd notion that offensive speech should never face social or commercial consequences.

Americans are free to engage in, avoid, deplore, or defend indefensible expression. Joe Groh rebranded his steaks not because of the protests of a vocal minority in 2004, but because of the standards of the vast majority in 2013. If some antisocial vanguard is punishing him out of a desire to stop time and progress just so they can continue to eat sandwiches in a place named after a racial insult, that's unfortunate. As for the rest of us, let's eat at Joe's.