Jeremy Lin’s so-far-brief but amazing performance for the New York Knicks has set the world on fire in a mere month.
Most NBA superstars are not 23-year-old Harvard graduates. And they are rarely devout Christians and second-generation Taiwanese-Americans. The fact that Lin is an anomaly has guaranteed both sensationalism and controversy, at least some of it politically incorrect. Take professional boxer Floyd Mayweather’s recent remark that “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.”
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Despite his crassness, Mayweather may be onto something, but not in the simplistic fashion he thinks. In Lin’s storybook saga, it is hard to sort out all the racial-stereotyping and affirmative-action undertones, but I think it goes something like this: Lin was probably not given earlier opportunities commensurate with his proven talents, given that both Harvard graduates and Asians (perceived in the NBA as a twofer disadvantage) are probably unfairly stereotyped by basketball players, coaches, and general managers as less physical and more nerdy — and therefore not as athletic as either black or white players.
Yet, once the Knicks gave Lin even a small chance to display his innate talent, the profiling vanished. His undeniable merits as a shooting, passing, and driving point guard have earned him almost all of the recognition that he has garnered. Remember, the NBA is a for-profit league and prides itself on judging players solely on talent — questions of diversity or proportionate racial representation, usually, be damned. After all, the Knicks began winning with Lin playing more, and should they start losing with him in the lineup, his current celebrity status will gradually wilt away.
But that’s not quite the end of the irony. Mayweather claims that Lin is still getting excessive attention based on his race, as if racism were at work in winning him inordinate praise for the same sort of skills that the African-American majority in the NBA displays each day.
Again, Mayweather is both right and wrong. True, Lin’s unusual background makes him a minority within his field and thus warrants unusual recognition beyond his resonance in the Asian community. But that fact is not due to Lin’s being Asian per se. Were Lin a native Amazonian or from the North Pole, his unusual profile might likewise be a force multiplier to what he could earn from his undeniable skill and his contribution to his team’s sudden success. The career of Tiger Woods is similar in that the combination of his talent and his unusual background ensured the sort of recognition that other gifted golfers could only dream of.
In that regard, I am sure that in the last 50 years there have been all sorts of Harvard Law Review editors who had far more articles published during their tenure than did Barack Obama. Yet few were well known outside of Harvard and had secured book deals before graduating — it was apparently deemed far more unusual for an African-American with a Kenyan-sounding name to serve as editor. (And one might argue further that Lin’s actual performance, at least so far, better warrants his extraordinary publicity than did Obama’s so-so record as a Harvard Law Review editor.)
I really love basketball, I can tell you that what Lin is doing is remarkable. Mayweather was correct when he said that there are black players who do what Lin has done over the past few weeks. If I had the choice between in point guards of Derek Rose or Jeremy Lin, I would choose Rose and a handful of others before picking Lin.
However the attention Lin is getting is not totally misplaced and isn't all (or even mostly) because he is Asian, that is where he is wrong (I must confess I'm a little shocked with how the media is dealing with an Asian basketball player, Amasian? it isn't like he is the first Asian to play professional sports) it is primarily because of two things: First it is a Cinderella story, Derek Rose and Chris Paul, everyone knew they were going to be stars so it was not unexpected, nobody saw the potential in Lin before he started his first game when he shocked everyone. Another thing, he plays for the NEW YORK Knicks, the media in New York magnifies everything. If he were playing for the Milwaukee Buck, he would get attention, but it would be about 1/5 of what it is in New York. Granted the fact that he is Asian probably helps with jersey sales as there are close to 2 billion people on the planet that look like Jeremy Lin, most of them have Chinese names, so it does make sense economically to promote him if you are the NBA and the Knicks.
Personally I think Mr. Lin seems like he would make a very good role model for young people, you can be an athlete and still try hard in school. He also majored in economics, which makes me like him even more.
Scouts clearly missed someone who is an outstanding point guard who probably should have been a lottery pick(although he really needs to work on limiting the turnovers and tighten the defense, but he is still young) .I think he is good enough to be a starting point guard on a championship level team, it is hard to attain one of those. It is amazing that he went un-drafted, any team in the league could have had him.
My five year old granddaughter loves the movie "The Blind Side." She loved Michael Oher, and it is one of those movies she, as kids do, could watch over and over. We live in an area where there are very few people of color, no reason; it's just the way it is. Since I do not care about skin color and in turn my daughter doesn't, she, the granddaughter has never noticed it. She just liked Michael for what he was as a person, you know, the character thing.
I realized I was seeing and enjoying the innocence of a child and it did my heart good.
Then one day she came home from school (kindergarten) and informed us that some people are black or have dark skin and we as white people were very mean to them. I wasn't quite sure how to explain this to her, but it made me very sad. I and her mother eventually told her that skin color doesn’t mean anything, it is like hair color. She is too young, in my opinion, to learn about wrongs of the past and how they were corrected. I just want her to be young and innocent for a while longer. As I said the whole thing made me sad.
You and your daughter are excellent role models for this young child. I'm sure if we are actually at a "post-racial" state as a nation (one can't deny that there is still an element that attacks Obama racially - ironically, not so much for being "black" but for having a Kenyan and Muslim background). The Republican party deserves major kudos for the involvement and embracing of Herman Cain in the nomination process. Your grand-daughter is likely going to be exposed to some unpleasant historical facts during Black History Month in future years. I think you know best when to make sense of it.
Ned the Red, I so agree with the thoughts you've shared. When my oldest children were around the age of your daughter, they would sometimes describe people as being "brown" or "peach-colored," but they were unaware of race. To them those were just colors. One of my children came home from school one day and said, "Do you know that there are people who are white?" She meant white like a piece of paper; she had heard the term in school, but had never seen anyone like that.
I also remember reading a poem to my daughter that was illustrated with drawings of children from countries around the world, dressed in native costume. She asked me what countries various ones were from. But when we got to a picture of an African-American boy dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she said, "Oh, he's just an American."
Tia Norfleet is beginning to garner a good deal of attention in the car racing news, not because she is in contention for the Sprint Cup, or whatever, but because she is the first black female Nascar driver.
She is doing stuff white men have done every weekend for decades and never been mentioned. So it is newsworthy.
It is because here is someone who manages to transcend the stereotypes we apply.
How many times have we heard about the first black this and the first black that. Not because they were necessarily stand-outs in the field, but because of their skin color.
I am not against this recognition, mind you, as with our Civil Rights history in America, it is noteworthy when barriers come down.
Same with Lin. Asian-looking point guards are few and far between in the NBA.
So to Floyd, I say, welcome to the lack of recognition that comes with higher expecations being placed on you.
Kudos for reminding me to check the sports page and see how the Knicks did last night. sounds like the chemistry of getting Anthony back in the line up along with their new gem of a point guard is starting to work. Tonight's game with the Heat should be interesting.
Lin is now a marked man, which for an athlete is the highest praise they can get, an acknowledgement by their peers.
The fact that Lin played college ball at Harvard, and is now performing and having success in the NBA is quite a story. Ivy League schools or obviously not known as being part of the pipeline for NBA stars. It's just a matter of the level and caliber of opponents played during college.
The whole ethnic background aspect of this story has been over blown. Maybe that's just a reflection on our society and some perverse fascination with ethnic background.
The real story is twofold. First, it's illustrative as to how someone that believes in themselves, works hard and perseveres can succeed. Second, when opportunity knocks in the right situation, the person is prepared to deliver. Lin is in exactly the right place (the Knicks offense is perfect for him) and he kept himself ready for the opportunity to deliver.
It's really a lot more fun (and interesting) reading about Lin's exploits (and watching the highlights) on sports web sites than it is reading drivel like this piece.
Lin’s sudden emergence may not necessarily be a function of racism/stereotyping. A number of great athletes have been late bloomers, guys who physically matured later than usual, or simply had a sort of epiphany about the game they played after being so-so college players and being cut by other pro teams (in football, one immediately thinks of Johnny Unitas and more recently, Kurt Warner). Of course the fact that he is of Asian background and (naturally) graduated with an academically demanding degree from a non-basketball school (Stanford, Cal and Michigan are considered academic powerhouses, but they also have very credible big budget athletic programs) makes the story so much more interesting.
This is a story of pure talent triumphing over mass produced athletics; Lin wasn’t a poor kid who was taught from childhood that sports were the cleanest and fastest avenue out of the ghetto. Professional athletes have always tended to come from poor backgrounds; in the 1930s, a lot of sports heroes were of Eastern European or Jewish backgrounds, poor kids whose parents had immigrated to America just a few years before. He probably didn’t spend thousands of hours working on his ‘game’ to the exclusion of his education, his parents didn’t decide that his sports success was his (and by extension, their) road to wealth and security and pressure him accordingly, he didn’t have a ‘posse’ of sycophants and hangers on from middle school on… no, Jeremy Lin is an almost disturbingly normal and balanced young man in a sport cluttered with head cases and prima donnas.
Floyd Mayweather is wrong, though; there are only so many NBA franchises and therefore, a correspondingly limited number of starting point guards. So far, Lin has proven that he could start ahead of a number of those point guards—African American or white, and he is scoring at a near record pace for a first year player. Lin is the real deal, and a prototypically American success story.
It has the air of being hurriedly composed, and it's not even clear what the *argument* is.
An application of tort law's distinction between "but for" causation and "proximate" causation applies to VDH's contention regarding the comparative contributions of skill and ethnicity to the phenomenon aptly dubbed, in a perfectly ironic way, "Linsanity."
Absent the skill, of course there would be nothing to talk about-which is just like saying that people who don't leave the house typically do not get struck by lightning.
However, the immediate, and supremely forseeable, cause of the hullabaloo is just what Mayweather says it is, and everyone who is honest and reasonable admits it.
If one carefully reflects on this, the error in Hanson's reasoning (such as it is) eventually becomes obvious.
That is, when was the last time dimwitted journalists were braying about how successful white basketball players *really can* jump after all?
I think it is in part due to the 'rags to riches' aspect of the story, but more importantly, Lin is someone who has talent AND humility. In other words, he is a rarity in the NBA - a true sportsman - instead of the usual foul mouthed, self aggrandizing braggarts.
1. Floyd is wrong. Black players don't come out of nowhere every day and average 24 points and 9 assists in their first 10 games after being on the verge of being cut and sleeping on a teammate's couch.
2. As VDH stated, Lin is a minority in the NBA. Black players are the establishment. If Lin were white or Latino or Native American, the reaction would be similar. The large Asian communities of the world amplifies this (i.e. Yao Ming).
3. If Lin were black, he'd still be getting a tremendous amount of press because he's playing for the Knicks. They are 9-2 since Lin entered the starting lineup and Lin is THE reason. Combine that with the fact that we are between NFL and March Madness & baseball and this would be a big sports story regardless.
Not particularly impressed by this article. Floyd Mayweather is an uneducated fool who has taken too many punches to the head. Why is a scholar dedicating so much space to rebutting the musings of a clown?
I also take issue with "Obama’s so-so record as a Harvard Law Review editor." Becoming Chief Editor of the Harvard Law Review is one of the highest accomplishments in all of law. To use a basketball analogy, it is not like scoring 20+ points in 5 games, it is like being a perennial Allstar. How did you even arrive at your assessment? Is your measure simply the number of Notes published? That is not the chief editor's job. What other criteria are you relying on? Your assessment of his performance as law review editor reveals a complete lack of familiarity with how elite law reviews work (this is coming from a former editor of the Columbia Law Review). Attack the man's policies. This petty jab just comes across as stupid and beneath a man of your education.
Obama was *elected* president of Harvard Law Review. While president, the "perennial Allstar" (and the dumb among us thought "perennial" implies more than two) published all of 6 pages worth of material plus an ungrammatically, inartfully composed letter in the Harvard Record in support of (what else?) affirmative action.
Since you raised the issue of educational credentials, take it from someone who not only has an Ivy League law degree, but *also* a top shelf Ph.D:
We have zero evidence that Obama can write. Period.
Way to circle the wagons regarding the allegedly elite law schools and the politics behind their journal appointments. (Of course, no doubt, I am merely jealous I didn't have the cash to go to Harvard Law or Columbia Law, nor did I have any of the affirmative action check off boxes in my favor. Just a hick white boy from a state law school).
Becoming Chief Editor of the Harvard Law Review is one of the highest accomplishments in all of law. To use a basketball analogy, it is not like scoring 20+ points in 5 games, it is like being a perennial Allstar.
You can't be serious. Ordinarily, it is an accomplishment, to be sure, but what is the percentage of Harvard Law Review editors whom anyone has even heard of after law school? And of course it is pertinent to ask about O's own writings. I highly doubt that VDH is ignorant of the ways in which one becomes a Law Review editor or of the status attached thereto. O was elected because it was cool that there was someone who could plausibly serve as the first black President of HLR. Apparently he served without leaving so much as a ripple in that pond.
Don't forget the desperation of old media, who more than ever need to pump up minor stories with a steady flow of new celebrity faces. (They're probably hoping the guy has a thing for cocktail waitresses.)
I mean, really, his skills aren't such a big deal, and there's nothing dazzling or even interesting about his style of play. If race is the story here, that doesn't make much sense when you compare this rather pedestrian workhorse with the dozens of white NBA stars in recent decades who were phenomenally talented, dazzling artists despite not having much height: Pistol Pete Maravich, Gail Goodrich, John Stockton....
And as nerds go, he's got nothing on Bill Walton, or that vastly more talented Princetonian who starred - not filled in - for the Knicks, Dave DeBusschere.
Not to burst anyone's bubble here, but really, the boxer has a point. This is a non-story.
