Thursday, December 06, 2007

"Pork Chop" Offensive?

We read:

"Two days after naming its mascot "PorkChop," the Philadelphia Phillies' new Triple-A affiliate abruptly dropped the moniker after receiving complaints from Hispanics that it was offensive.

General Manager Kurt Landes said he heard from several Hispanics who said PorkChop was derogatory. "We were really unaware of any negative connotations with the word 'pork chop,"' he said. "If it offended a few, it's a few too many."

Guillermo Lopez, vice president of the Latino Leadership Alliance, said he was called "pork chop" when he worked at Bethlehem Steel decades ago. "If my parents were alive, they'd be having fits," said Lopez, among those who complained to the team. "It meant much more to them than it does to Puerto Ricans now in the Lehigh Valley."

Source

In Australian slang, a "pork chop" is someone who panics or gets upset too easily. If American slang is the same (and I know that there are regional variations in American slang) the guy complaining was being criticized for his personal characteristics rather than his ethnic origins.

Other than that "Porks" is a South African abbreviation for the Portuguese. But it is just an abbreviation.