Jeremy Lin - Racial Issues

Racial Issues

Sean Gregory of Time wrote of Lin's zero Division I scholarship offers: " was scrawny, but don't doubt that a little racial profiling, intentional or otherwise, contributed to his underrecruitment." Diepenbrock stated, "If was African American or Caucasian, it might have been a different deal"; he did not think Lin's race affected his recruiting until later seeing 10 Division I coaches express interest in a black student who Diepenbrock assessed as "a nice junior college player." Lin said: "I'm not saying top-5 state automatically gets you offers, but I do think (my ethnicity) did affect the way coaches recruited me. I think if I were a different race, I would've been treated differently." Walters added, "People who don't think stereotypes exist are crazy. If white, he's either a good shooter or heady. If he's Asian, he's good at math. We're not taking him."

Diepenbrock said that people without meaning any harm assume since Lin is Asian that he is not a basketball player. The first time Lin went to a Pro-Am game in Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco someone there informed him: "Sorry, sir, there's no volleyball here tonight. It's basketball." During Lin's college career, fewer than 0.5% of men's Division 1 basketball players were Asian-American. Lin has regularly heard bigoted jeers at games such as "Wonton soup", "Sweet and sour pork", "Open your eyes!", "Go back to China", "Orchestra is on the other side of campus", or pseudo-Chinese gibberish. Lin says this occurred at most if not all Ivy League gyms. He does not react to it. "I expect it, I'm used to it, it is what it is," says Lin. The heckling came mostly from opposing fans and not as much from players. According to Harvard teammate Oliver McNally, a fellow Ivy League player once called Lin the ethnic slur chink. In January 2010, Harvard played against Santa Clara University at the Leavey Center, just 15 miles from his hometown of Palo Alto, California. Playing to a capacity crowd that included droves of Asian Americans wanting to see his homecoming, his teammates told him, "It was like Hong Kong."

Lin considers himself a basketball player more than just an Asian American. He understands that there have not been many Asians in the NBA. "Maybe I can help break the stereotype," said Lin. "I feel like Asians in general don't get the respect that we may deserve whether it comes to sports, basketball, or whatever it might be." Prior to the 2010–11 NBA season, Americans of Asian descent who played in the NBA included Wataru Misaka, Raymond Townsend, Corey Gaines, Rex Walters, and Robert Swift. " carrying the hopes of an entire continent. I only had to carry the hopes of Little Rock, Arkansas. He's accomplished a lot more than I have already," said Derek Fisher, who had won five NBA championships with the Lakers, after his first game against Lin. Lin is setting an example for prospective Asian athletes in America who rarely see Asian-Americans playing on their favorite teams. "I don't look Japanese," Walters said, referring to his mother's ethnicity. "When they see, it's an Asian-American".

Some fans and commentators wrote off his Warriors signing as a publicity stunt. Larry Riley, the team's general manager, denied catering to the Bay Area’s large Asian population. He understood that some people would see it that way. "We evaluated him throughout summer league," Riley said. “All that had to happen was for him to confirm what we already believed." While the team created a campaign around him, Riley said it would not have been advisable if Lin was not a basketball player first.

I know a lot of people say I'm "deceptively athletic" and "deceptively quick," and I'm not sure what’s deceptive. But it could be the fact that I’m Asian-American. But I think that’s fine. It's something that I embrace, and it gives me a chip on my shoulder. But I'm very proud to be Asian-American and I love it.

—Jeremy Lin, during 2012 All-Star Weekend interview

On February 10, 2012, in the middle of Lin's career game against the Lakers, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock posted on Twitter, "Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight", a reference to Lin's sexual prowess. Hyphen wrote that Whitlock "reinforced the insipid and insidious 'small Asian penis' stereotype." The Asian American Journalists Association demanded an apology. "I debased a feel-good sports moment. For that, I’m truly sorry," apologized Whitlock. Boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr. wrote on his Twitter page, "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." NBCNewYork.com in response to Mayweather noted that "no one of any skin color in the history of basketball has done in their first four starts what Lin pulled off for the Knicks last week." On February 15, the MSG Network during game coverage showed a fan's sign of Lin's face above a fortune cookie with the words "The Knicks Good Fortune", which some viewed as an ethnic stereotype. Sporting News wrote that the sign was "questionable", while CBS News called it "distasteful". Some Knicks teammates have been criticized for bowing to Lin during games. On February 17, ESPN used a racial slur on its mobile website in the headline "Chink in the Armor" after Lin had nine turnovers in New York’s loss to the Hornets. It was removed 35 minutes later, and ESPN apologized. The network fired the employee who posted the headline, and suspended ESPNews anchor Max Bretos for using the same reference earlier in the week. Bretos also apologized. Knicks radio announcer Spero Dedes also used the phrase on 1050 ESPN New York, but he was an employee of Madison Square Garden (MSG) and not ESPN. He apologized and was disciplined by MSG. Saturday Night Live in a cold open satirized the puns in reference to Lin's ethnicity; three commentators were featured happily making jokes about Lin's race, while a fourth drew contempt for making similar comments about black players. ESPN received emails suggesting that Lin was subjected to racial slurs in a manner that African-Americans are not. Ben & Jerry's created a frozen yogurt in honor of Lin named "Taste the Lin-Sanity". The company replaced the fortune cookies with waffle cookies and apologized to anyone offended by their Lin-Sanity flavor. J. A. Adande of ESPN.com wrote that the heightened ethnic sensitivity toward Asian Americans was "another way impact resonates far beyond Madison Square Garden." The AAJA released a set of guidelines to the media in response to what it termed as "factual inaccuracies about Lin's background as well as an alarming number of references that rely on stereotypes about Asians or Asian Americans."