As Lin captivates fans with basketball prowess, he also makes people confront their biases and reassess why Asian Americans have been publicly categorized in ways unacceptable for other minorities.
Of all the drives, dunks and dazzling shots Jeremy Lin is forcing upon the stars of the NBA, none of it compares with the moves he's putting on a larger collection of everyday people.
Jeremy Lin has dribbled America into the previously quiet corner of its casual prejudice and lazy stereotypes of Asian Americans.
The true beauty of his story is in awareness of the ugliness that has been found there.
It's been barely two weeks since the beginning of a tale that rocked the sports world with great basketball and bad puns, but so much already has changed. When America now looks at Lin, it should see more than an Asian American kid from Harvard who overcame ignorance at every level to become a star guard for the New York Knicks.
America should see itself in the murky reflection of a society that has long considered it reasonable to publicly categorize Asian Americans in ways that would never be acceptable for other, more vocal minorities.
America should see the writer from Foxsports.com who began the barrage of ignorance last week by tweeting a tired joke about the assumed size of Lin's manhood. The guy apologized, but his company did not, which should not be surprising considering Fox Sports is also the outfit that last fall aired a segment in which a reporter ridiculed Asian Americans at USC for not understanding football.
Can you imagine a major American media company tolerating this sort of blatant racism if it were directed toward any of Lin's African American teammates?
America should see the game video from the Knicks' MSG network in which cameras focused on a homemade sign that showed Lin's face above a fortune cookie with the words, 'The Knicks Good Fortune.'
Can you imagine, five months from now, that same television director willingly airing a shot of a sign that made fun of the heritage of a Latino member of the New York Mets?
If America has the stomach, it should even watch the tape of the WNYW morning show in New York where one of the anchors, upon hearing a reporter list Lin's physical attributes, asked, 'What about his eyes?'
The newsman made the slur, he sort of winked with glee, the entire news desk laughed and I'm thinking, you're kidding me, right? In a media world that is reluctant to even cite a subject's ethnicity unless it is relevant, it's suddenly OK to openly laugh about Lin's cultural characteristics because, well, because he's Asian American and everybody does it?
'In this country, Asian Americans are stereotyped as the meek and the mild, the ones who will always take the racism,' said Daryl Maeda, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado who specializes in Asian American studies. 'There is a perception that it's OK to offend Asian Americans because they simply won't fight back.'
There was finally push-back last weekend at ESPN, which fired one employee and suspended another for separately describing the Knicks' first loss with Lin as a starter as a 'Chink in the armor.'
The guy who was fired amazingly felt confident enough to put it in a mobile website headline. The guy who was suspended said it on the air during a conversation, and it seemed impulsive enough that he was probably just throwing out a cliché without thinking.
In marginalizing the Jeremy Lin story, that newsman actually illustrated its real importance. This newfound basketball force has forced Americans to take a deep breath and think. He has forced America to realize it has become too comfortable compartmentalizing Asian Americans with a list of stereotypes that are misguided, mean-spirited and just plain wrong.
Such as that one that says, you know, they can't play sports.
'The one thing I think is interesting about this whole Jeremy Linsanity is that it has forced us to think about how we think and talk about race in general,' Maeda said. 'Asian Americans have long been put into this safe little slot, and Jeremy has taken us out of those places.'
This is what sports does. This is one reason sports matters. Through the shared understanding of the human condition that so publicly exists in sports, society is often forced into self-realization and change, and where else can that happen?
America really needs to watch the 'Saturday Night Live' skit in which three sports reporters laughingly discuss Lin while using Asian American slurs, yet when a fourth newsman tries to discuss other Knicks by using African American slurs, they become offended.
'This all shows how Asian Americans have long been the invisible minority,' Maeda said.
Not right now, not in NBA's biggest city, as the most celebrated Asian American in league history is in the backcourt for one of the NBA's marquee teams, in the center of what could end up being the sports story of the year.
Jeremy Lin's heritage is a wonderful part of this story and should not be ignored. But can't we do that without being ignorant?
Source
Couldn't agree more with this article and wanted to bold everything. I've been really upset by the bullshit comments the sports media has been spewing, especially because I'm an East Asian-American myself. Fuck those guys.
Half-Korean here!
This actually brings me back to back when I could tolerate Oprah and they were talking about race and they (the audience, guest-members and Oprah included) literally ignored the one Asian student they chose as guest. It was very disturbing.
On the mothership, someone posted an article about Jeremy Lin that talked about the "soft bigotry of low expectations." The (white) article writer talked about how Asian men have it so much worse than Asian women, because people have good stereotypes about Asian women (we're nice and smart) and even though positive stereotypes can be stifling, it's nothing like what Asian men go through!
(The writer also talked about how some Asian women might complain about being considered asexual, which tells me that he really didn't have a clue about Asian stereotypes at all.)
He also mentioned how he has a lot of Asian friends and is married to an Asian woman, which apparently makes him qualified to talk about issues pertaining to the Asian-American community.
I grew up in the Bay Area with a Korean adopted sister and best friends who were Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino. I married an extraordinary Chinese-American woman, and thus joined her family and community (amongst whom I now live). Even though I’m Caucasian, I’ve been around Asian-American communities long enough to see that Asian-American men and women face different stereotypes and different challenges. Asian-American women by and large have a positive, helpful image in American society. Although some Asian-American women will complain about stereotypes of submissiveness or nerdiness or asexuality, so many Asian-American women have become doctors, lawyers, reporters and businesswomen that they’re generally seen as intelligent, professional, attractive, friendly, and relatively innocent or untainted by bad attitudes and bad influences. Even positive stereotypes can be confining, of course, but they’re better than negative ones.
AHAHAHAHHAHA
WHEEZING RN
You know the idjit who did that dreadful "Chink in the Armor" headline came back with "I didn't mean it that way! I'm not racist; my wife is Asian!" too, right?
"My wife is Asian" really is becoming the new "I have Black friends," isn't it?
I guess people don't know how to deal when it comes with a group of people who are granted a certain small amount of racial privilege as a model minority that is used against other minorities.
Yeah, the model minority thing is precisely why I hate when discussions of Asians and race come up, as much as it needs to be talked about. It's painful to be told that you, as a minority, ought to be on the side of the majority and then to be used against other minorities is just so not okay.
Isn't that mainly a certain subset of Asian-Americans, though? I mean, that's another reason I don't like the whole model minority stereotype, because it completely erases the groups that aren't a part of that niche. Asian-Americans are more than Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, etc.
A decent article that links a study on Asian Americans: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/0
Not to say that we don't have our own racial issues, just that the dynamics and context are different.
What the.... did this seriously happen??
I can buy that that one reporter who used "chink in the armor" on air was, as mentioned in the article, simply throwing out a cliche without thinking, as it's not an especially uncommon idiomatic expression. But someone actually mentioned his eyes? Fuck you.
Edited at 2012-02-21 10:31 pm (UTC)
i was like "shit, that eyes comment? i missed that"
and then i realized how sad it was that i missed such an offensive comment BECAUSE OF HOW MANY THERE HAVE BEEN
fuck this shit
Not that Blacks are completely absolved from this. Remember that Vogue cover with LeBron and Gisele or that cover with Tiger looking all menacing? Even in sports media, Black men are stereotyped as hell.
But what make me glad people spoke up about it and almost all people got their asses handed out to them. (Seriously fuck that fortune cookie bullshit...)
It's sad that people don't recognize that as being racist; people have such an elementary idea of what "racism" is. :| They don't even recognize it as being fucking insulting, in the case of Lin and all the media fuckery. It's sad.
i like the times article that came out a few days ago, too (sunday?); it also briefly mentioned how americans had to confront their asian biases/prejudices. mmmmmm, it described a rec center basketball game, where, for the first time, the other guys weren't ignoring the asians, because "what if we have a jeremy lin on our hands?"
like yah, fuck you, bitches, best be lookin' out
LOL there was also a harvard political review article about "choosing the better model for harvard leadership" aka lin vs. zuckerberg (betraying andrew garfield, the most beautiful boy in the world, is not the harvard way)
Edited at 2012-02-22 01:10 am (UTC)
Speaking of...enjoy!
Do We Really Think That ESPN Headline Was Intentionally Racist?
Subtitled: What if we all lost our jobs for innocent mistakes we made after a long and stressful day at work?
#icant
Edited at 2012-02-22 05:38 am (UTC)
Subtitled: What if we all lost our jobs for innocent mistakes we made after a long and stressful day at work?