Here’s an admission: I’ve actually never seen him play. But I’ve scoured enough sports articles and blog entries to keep me up to date with the whole Lin frenzy. Even if I didn’t, there’d be no way I’d go without hearing about it. I was in the coffee room yesterday when a coworker turned and asked everyone around him, “Have you heard about Lin? Jeremy Lin?”
Jeremy Lin is significant to the world of sports because he is an underdog bench player suddenly boasted into stardom. He is significant to mass society because his story speaks of hope, an emotion we can all relate to. He is significant to me because he is Asian American.
Before you groan, roll your eyes, and classify me as being un-PC, you have to realize there is no way to disregard race. Even my mom who has never cared about basketball (or any sport for that matter) has been mentioning him over every meal. Why? Because he is Asian American. He shares the exact same identity as her own children. There’s an automatic connection that can’t be severed, which is probably how the African Americans must have felt when Jackie Robinson made it to the MLB.
Yet, I’m not here to overplay emotion or claim honor. To me, this connection is important because he’s going to blow things up in my community (if he hasn’t already.) Ling Woo Liu made an important point in the CNN article, Why Jeremy Lin’s Race Matters: “[T]he conversations on Facebook, in bars and living rooms are as diverse as the Asian American community itself. Some are pumped up about seeing an Asian face next to Kobe Bryant’s or moved by Lin’s public devotion to Christianity. Others are analyzing Lin’s academic and athletic prowess and thinking about the role model he’ll be for their children.” Did you get that? Read it again. That statement strikes clarity about the exact controversies that Asian Americans in my generation, my parent’s generation, and the future generations of Asian Americans face.
I grew up in a town where the population felt like 80% Asian. I also went to college in an Asian-dominated system. Thus, having spent so many years being nurtured in a similar environment as Lin’s (LA and Palo Alto), I know first-hand what Liu was talking about.
Asian Americans are a hybrid class of immigrants’ children whom all had to shed parts of our roots and assimilate to a culture vastly different from the ones our parents were raised with. We range from “bananas,” a vernacular term describing someone who looks Asian on the outside but has lost so much of their cultural roots that they are “white on the inside,” to people who “might as well be FOBs.” Actually, scratch that—there is no suitable umbrella term; in fact, our existence spans like an iceberg, Amy Tan and Lucy Liu as the commercialized tip. However, while we are a diverse and bifurcated group, each community—as society—has its trends…Asian Americans are not known to crank out athletes.
In high school, we often mocked a rival school for not having a football team because their Asian student population was much higher than ours. In college, we mocked ourselves for not having any legitimate sport teams because “we’re Asian, all we do is study.” I remember being asked as a kid how many colleges I could name off the top of my head (as if that’s so important and something to be proud about.) My mom collected SAT guides for me since I was in junior high. Honors and AP classes were filled with contention between students battling over who sets the curve. Any kid that pursued a degree in science, law, or technology was openly praised and deemed honorable. When one of my family friend’s daughter declared a linguistics major, her father promptly forwarded her a Yahoo! article of the top 20 useless majors to have.
No one’s really at fault for this. Most of our parents are immigrants if we aren’t ourselves. It is stamped in our mindset that “useless” is bad. “Useless” won’t get you anywhere even if there is passion. We are bred for being “useful,” for lucubrating to get the best grades we can, for insuring careers, for fortifying our 401K and savings accounts, especially in a society where we are second-rate. Playing basketball? That’s nice…as long as it’s only your hobby.
Hence why Jeremy Lin is blowing up conversations over cups of tea, dim sum, and mah jong. He’s challenging not only the racial minds of non-Asian Americans, but conventional thinking of Asian descents alike.
I’m going to leave it to the sports fanatics to bicker out whether Lin is simply a media sensation or if he truly spews game. However, Linsanity is nothing to vilipend. To the Asian American community, he’s already changing the game. His success (which he has yet to prove) is ineluctably going to affect the thinking of future Asian American generations and what is expected of them. Reveling under a national athletic spotlight is one more thing for us all to acclimate to. No matter what stance you take, the debate is on.
Apparently socks are sold too!
