Is “clanker” a slur? Anti-robot jokes accused of being thinly veiled racism

At its heart, it’s a ridiculous image.

A battle droid from “Star Wars” sits on the ground, clutching its aluminum knees (hinges?) to its chest. The droid doesn’t have a face, just that George Lucas-designed chrome head that looks like a drawing of a Borzoi from memory. Still, it’s obviously dejected. The air around the droid is bullying it with colorful insults: tin skin, sparky, oil slurper, and, the lone jeer that’s canon, clanker.

The drawing was posted on X over the weekend by a user claiming their son was the original artist. They couldn’t have known that their post would kick off a debate about racial slurs and the rush to adopt new epithets for outgroups.

lmaooooooo my son drew this today pic.twitter.com/tbezODeVl2

— eric63 amg biturbo 4matic (@EricMTerrill1) August 16, 2025

Many social media users accused the slang term, which has grown in popularity on apps like TikTok, of being thinly veiled racism and an opportunity to say slurs without consequences.

“The ‘clanker’ meme is really weird and feels like an excuse for white people to almost say slurs with plausible deniability,” one user wrote.

“The clanker jokes are funny until you clock that white people are itching to call ANYTHING a slur,” wrote another.

The term originated in the “Star Wars” universe as a derogatory term for omnipresent droids. It remained popular in that fandom, particularly among gamers making in-jokes about “Star Wars: Battlefront” and other releases set in the galaxy far, far away. The term for an automaton picked up steam elsewhere with the advent of artificial intelligence and the wider adoption of delivery robots.

The jury’s still out on whether the term can be considered offensive, and it’s already found its way into polite society. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego used the term while promoting a piece of legislation that would cut down on automated customer service lines.

“Sick of yelling ‘REPRESENTATIVE’ into the phone 10 times just to talk to a human being?” he wrote on X in July. “My new bill makes sure you don’t have to talk to a clanker if you don’t want to.”