(A few notes about this post:
1. I'm generalizing the media reaction. I understand because of HOW MUCH reaction there's been, there have been people who have pointed out the racism, and there's been a lot of Asian writers who have spoken about racism and how important Jeremy Lin means to Asian-Americans, but I'm speaking about the general trend in the "mainstream" sports reporting about "Linsanity".
2. I'm using "Asian-American" as a term for Pacific/East Asian people in North America. I understand that Asian has a different meaning in other parts of the world (like in the UK where it generally refers to South-East Asian or Indian people) and I also understand that even in American, Asian American includes all sorts of other Asian nationalities. :)
3. I understand that every PoC faces racism not just African and Asian Americans, the sample I used was just to make a point and illustrate how racism has changed and hidden itself, it isn't to imply that nobody else faces racism, or that only African and Asian Americans exist. However, racists almost always use those 2 groups to "balance" their racism, which is why I used them as examples.)
I've been trying to gather my thoughts about Jeremy Lin for the past few days but it's been difficult because I have so many, and there's been so much written about him that I want to respond to, both good and bad.
Jeremy Lin isn't "Lincredible". He's a good player, some nights he's even a great player. Last night he was a clutch player. But he has trouble defending, he can't go left, and he commits a LOT of turnovers. Also, as his critics have pointed out, he's been played a lot and has almost total possession of the basketball and what happens to it. (His critics also ignore that not everybody in that situation thrives, much less leads teams to victory, or steps up in clutch situations.) If Jeremy Lin were black, or white, he would be celebrated, and we can't ignore that he's set a record for the most points scored in a player's first 5 starts since the NBA/ABA merger(that includes MJ, Kobe and Shaq) but he would just be another point guard found off the discard heap that turned out to be useful (like Rafer Alston). I'm really really really glad that he's having amazing games, and hitting clutch shots, but I think we need to be realistic, he's not going to lead the Knicks to 30 straight wins, nor is he going to be 20/10 every night. And he doesn't need to. At least I hope he doesn't need to, because what I'm really afraid of is that this story is being chalked up to
"magic" and "miracles" and "the little engine that could" and that people only care about him as a hero slaying dragons, and him being an Asian American baller who can PLAY isn't enough, and is irrelevant.
And by that I'm not talking about the thousands of Asian American bloggers who have written about how important he is to them, and to breaking stereotypes of Asian Americans, I'm talking about the media, the "general" (read: white) audience, the talking heads, the sporting culture, other athletes, other players... everybody currently writing and creating all the narratives about Jeremy Lin, the ones talking about "miracles",
"fairy tales", and calling him
"our Rudy".
I'm concerned because, all the narratives so far are acting like he's the little engine that could. Who's Rudy?
Rudy was an undersized college football player who through determination earned the respect of his teammates and got to play once in a college game and recorded a sack and everybody cheered and it was inspirational and wonderful and we realized that little engines can sometimes pull through.
The problem is, this isn't that story. Jeremy Lin has succeeded at every level he's played basketball at. He's been an all-star and a champion in high school and was ignored by every college but Harvard. In college, he also continued to shine and set records. A basketball statistician
even predicted his professional success in a pre-draft breakdown saying that Lin was one of the best point guards in the draft. And yet... he wasn't drafted, and wasn't given real minutes until now.
This isn't Rudy. This isn't close to Rudy. Rudy was a player who didn't have the physical tools or talent to play college football but proved that through determination, one might be able to live their dream despite their limitations. Lin is a 6'3" 200lb. point guard who always had the tools and talent to play in the NBA. What's his limitation? I'll say what almost everybody in the mainstream media seems to be trying to avoid saying: he's an Asian American male.
He's not doing this with mirrors. This isn't a "fairy tale" in the sense that he's using magic. There's no fairy god mother here. This is a good basketball player who could always play basketball doing what he's always done: play basketball well, with intelligence and talent. So why is everybody treating him like he's a 5'2" child who could never play and cheering him on as if he's a dog, monkey or kid playing with adult human men in a Disney movie? He's an "underdog" in the sense that because of racism, he was ignored by scouts and coaches and that's how he slipped through the cracks. He's an underdog in credentials only. But he's not a pity case, he's not a "feel good" Rudy story. He's a talented, clutch and raw young player who is finally giving the New York Knicks the leadership and point guard play they desperately needed. So why are we acting like he's a puppy playing with wolves? Because he doesn't have "the look".
In his book, Moneyball, Michael Lewis talks often about "the look" that scouts search for when looking for a player. It often has nothing to do with performance as much as it has to do with what athletes SHOULD look like. They should be tall, and broad shouldered, and build muscle quickly. They should look like underwear models. And, as the history of sports has shown again and again and again, I'll add another one: they should be the right colour.
There once was a time where black players weren't seen as being capable of playing the quarterback position in football. It had nothing to do with athleticism, in fact "athleticism" was used against them. Sure, the common knowledge went, African Americans were athletic, I mean look at them, right? you just can't deny it, but they're not very smart, and quarterback requires intelligence. Sorry, that's just how it is. I didn't make the rules, go blame God. If scouts looked at African Americans, they saw physically gifted players, but they also saw players who weren't smart enough, not plucky enough, not mentally tough enough. It didn't matter if they actually WERE or not, the scouts, coaches and managers all saw what they wanted to see. Just like this off-season, a lot of the discussion around Prince Fielder was about how fat he appears. It doesn't matter that he's missed all of 6 games in his entire Major League career, it doesn't matter that he's a vegan and he eats a healthy diet, and keeps in good shape. He's fat. I mean, just look at him. How can he be healthy? He's gonna break down in 3 years, 4 tops.
People see what they want to see. Your eyes can lie because they're affected by your own biases, by your prejudices, and that includes racism. Pretty much every article I've read on Lin since "Linsanity" began has been about
How did scouts miss him? Is there a flaw in our meritocracy?
Maybe it's just a fluke, those happen. The ugly truth everybody (except a few scribes, like
Michael Grange of Sportsnet) seems to be dancing around is "racism".
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And the greatest trick racists ever pulled was convincing the world racism no longer exists.
I mean, we all know it still exists. We know that there's cross burners, and Stormfront and Neo Nazis. We know people still burn Mosques and throw bricks at Synagogues. But "regular" racism, the kind we all are inundated with every day in our society, has become hidden. The old world racism where white people are just de facto superior has been replaced by the new world "compatabilism" racism of The Bell Curve.
Basically, in this new style racism, white people aren't "superior" as much as "balanced". Think of a fantasy world where you have the monstrous but stupid orcs (or trolls, or goblins, or what have you), the smart but thin and waiflike elves, and then you have the plucky humans, not too smart, but smart enough, not too strong, but strong enough, and they've got other skills. They've got determination, they've got creativity, they've got leadership. They've got the "intangibles".
This is the racism was have in our society now, where white people have moved from the top of a hierarchy, to the centre of structure that stereotypes every other race as being "too much" of one thing and "not enough" of another, and always, ALWAYS lacking in intangibles.
In football, this meant that black players were "athletic" but white players were "intelligent" and "creative" and showed "leadership".
And in greater society, it means white people can do anything, but other races are pigeon-holed into certain categories. African Americans are great athletes and entertainers, but don't expect them to be great thinkers or programmers. Asian Americans are great programmers and workers, but don't expect them to be great managers, or athletes.
It's Orcs and Elves and Humans... and it's all bullshit. It's the same old racist structure remodelled with a dash of paint to make it an easier sell to a white society that still wants to consider itself the "default" but is deathly afraid of being thought of as "racist".
But the truth is it is racist. And it's racist to different races in different ways. And this needs to be understood to understand WHY Jeremy Lin is "Lincredible" to the mainstream media, and also why, despite this, he still means so much to Asian Americans (and SHOULD).
In our society being Asian American and male means you're considered less masculine, just like being an Asian American woman means you're stereotyped as being hyper-feminine. In the "reverse", Black men are portrayed as being hyper-masculine, and black women are seen as being less feminine, more masculine. Again, there's this false idea of "balance" when in fact it's all racial stereotyping.
We live in a culture where Asian men are rarely portrayed as athletes, as heroes in our media, and even as lovers. They're the nerds, they're the scientists, they're the background characters in TV shows who run DNA tests. They might be martial artists, but they're celibate, non-threatening monks, or
pure fighters who entertain the audience but don't even get a kiss. They rarely get the girl, and
if a movie is based on events involving an Asian protagonist, we can generally expect Hollywood to fix that up for us. And, while you see many same race couples in commercials, tv shows and media, if there's an Asian woman (especially a heroine), she'll almost always have a non-Asian boyfriend. That isn't to say that we "belong" to Asian men, but that it sends the message that they are "inferior" men. (I could go into the racist fascination with Asian women, but that's another post >_> )
In this backdrop, it's pretty obvious to see how important Jeremy Lin is to Asian Americans in general, and especially Asian American men. He's not a 7'6" foreign player like Yao Ming. Even racism has to give way to that much height that scouts can't ignore. Jeremy Lin gives every Asian American male who loves sports somebody to point to that looks like them, and that's a privilege a lot of white people don't understand. Much like boys can dream of winning the World Series and girls can at most dream of being the first female major leaguer, white boys could always imagine themselves as being successful athletes, Asian American boys could only imagine that they do the impossible and become the first Asian American player. Jeremy Lin has changed that. He breaks stereotypes, and hopefully his success will expand "the look", much like Tiger Woods' success and Jackie Robinson's and Warren Moon's success did. It's sad that we always need a superstar to prove a race can actually measure up to white people, but in our society, it's racism unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
And that's why I'm afraid. I'm afraid that with all of his success being chalked up as "miracles" and "fantasies", with him being labelled "Rudy", that all we've done is play into the stereotype again. He's not an Asian American man who is a pretty good point guard who makes too many turnovers but is clutch as hell, he's a puppy dog who is so cute scoring baskets. I'm worried because people say "eventually the bubble will burst". That depends on what you consider the bubble. If this is all about him scoring 25 points and 10 assists a night and the Knicks never lose again, then yes, it will. If this is a story about the little engine that could that came out of nowhere and did "miracles" before fading away from public caring, then we'll have learned nothing.
If, however, this is a story about how Asian Americans can play basketball just as well as white Americans and black Americans except that they've been overlooked because of racism, then... the Jeremy Lin phenomenon will truly have been Lincredible.
