I'm cool with selfies. (I'm a twentysomething working in the digital beauty industry, after all.) If you're feeling good about yourself, how you look, and you want to share that — so long as you're not hurting anyone, do it.The key distinguishing factor here is, perhaps, the last part: "You're not hurting anyone." But today, Buzzfeed pointed out that there are tons of people using a racist and derogatory ethnic slur to describe their eyes in selfies. That term? "Chink."Let's be clear here. By definition, a chink is "a narrow opening or crack, typically one that admits light," and that's how Shakespeare used it in A Midsummer's Night's Dream, in which the fictional lovers Pyramus and Thisbe communicate through a chink in a wall. But that's not how it's being used on the 'gram, Snapchat, or Twitter.Starting as early as the 1900s , the term was popularised as a racial slur against Chinese immigrants — and eventually numerous other Asian ethnic groups. While the official etymology is unclear, some theorise that the term refers to the narrow, monolid eyes many Asians have; others suggest the word might be an onomatopoeia for the clinking metal-on-metal sound of Chinese labourers working on the railroads that were instrumental in the American expansion westward. (At the time, Chinese immigration was viewed as a threat to Americans.)Either way, the term is surrounded in controversy. In 2012, an ESPN journalist was suspended for using the phrase "chink in the armour" in reference to Asian-American NBA point guard Jeremy Lin. He later said that it was "...not done with any racial reference." Which is a long way of saying, maybe, just maybe, some people are that ignorant.