Chink in one's armor

[1] Grammarist provides a sample usage by The Daily Telegraph that they find acceptable:[2] "Such hype was anathema for the modest professional fighter, who has 22 victories under his belt, and not a perceptible chink in his armour."

[3] While the phrase itself is innocuous, its use in contemporary times has caused controversy in the United States due to it including the homonym "chink", which can be interpreted as an ethnic slur to refer to someone of Chinese or East Asian descent.

[4] Considerable controversy was generated in the United States after two incidents regarding Taiwanese American basketball player Jeremy Lin and the network ESPN occurred in the same week.

[6] While ESPN has used the phrase "chink in the armor" on its website over 3,000 times before, its usage in this instance was considered offensive because it directly referred to a person of Asian descent.

[13] In 2015, The Wall Street Journal used the idiom in a tweet to promote an article about various difficulties China's paramount leader Xi Jinping was encountering.

"[14] In October 2018, TBS baseball announcer Ron Darling, who himself is of Chinese descent, used the phrase during a Yankees-Red Sox playoff game, referring to the performance of Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka and immediately received similar criticism.