The Case Of The Offensive Band Name

Can the government refuse a trademark because it’s “scandalous”?

- Vicki Glembocki

WHEN SIMON TAM started a band in Portland, Oregon, USA, in 2006, he thought he’d come up with the perfect name—The Slants. Sure, it could be interpreted as a racial slur against Asians, but that was precisely the point. Tam and the rest of the band’s members are Asian Americans who play what they call ‘Chinatown dance rock’. They used the slurs and mocking nursery rhymes they had heard as kids as inspiration for albums with titles such as The Yellow Album and Slanted Eyes, Slanted Hearts. “We want to take on these stereotypes that people have about us, like the slanted eyes, and own them,” Tam explained.