Linspirational or Linevitable?

The Jeremy Lin story has been all the rage these past few weeks, and as a Chinese-American basketball fan who loves puns and whose brother went to Harvard, it's been a story that's resonated with me on so many levels. I've read a lot of other people's opinions on him but haven't seen anyone write any of the major sentiments that I feel.  The major angles that I've seen on him are: wow where did this kid come from? Why wasn't he given a chance before this? Is it because he's Asian? Would he still be a good story if he wasn't Asian? Why are we making such a big deal about his race? Has this story revealed society's intolerant attitude towards Asian-Americans?  Can he and Melo co-exist and lead the Knicks deep into the playoffs?  How is he similar or different to Tim Tebow?

In Hong Kong and China, angles have also included what country will he represent? Taiwan? USA? Could he have ever made it as a basketball player in China? (spoiler alert: no) Is his whole existence a defiance of the Chinese athletic system?

For starters, some people are saying it would be a big story whether he was black, white or green.  False.  It would be a big sports story if he was black or white. It would be a big alien story if he was green.  The case in point is Ryan Fitzgerald, the former Harvard quarterback drafted in the 7th round and led the Bills to a very strong start this past NFL season.  His story was well-publicized while he was playing well and for a while it seemed like he may have become a well-known personality.  However his story was strictly a sports story and never crossed over into popular culture.  Jeremy Lin's story coming out of Harvard undrafted is very similar and would have been a sports story, especially since he's reviving a marquee franchise in the New York Knicks, but the entire reason Linsanity has blown up and crossed so far into popular culture that he's the subject of the opening SNL skit is because he's Asian-American.

We've simply never seen an Asian-American like this in the NBA.  Forget the NBA actually, we've never seen an Asian-American like this in any major American sport.  Trust me, I've kept track over the years. There was Michelle Kwan in figure skating, Apolo Anton Ohno (halfie) in speed skating, Michael Chang in tennis, Paul Kariya (halfie) in hockey, Hines Ward (halfie) in football, Dat Nguyen in football, Brian Ching in soccer, Kurt Suzuki in baseball, the Ting twins who played secondary for USC football, and Timmy Chang the Hawaii quarterback are the most famous ones I can remember from this generation.  And how many of those have you heard of? Sorry but I'm not including Tiger Woods in that list.  With Asian athletes, you can throw in Ichiro and Yao Ming certainly.  Their impacts were huge but very different.  They came from far off countries we didn't fully understand, and thus were objects of marvel and curiosity rather than a topic of societal re-evaluation.  Jeremy Lin is by far the most famous name on the list of Asian-Americans and has sparked by far the most dialogue.  Part of it is that he's playing in a sport that requires elite size and athleticism and perceived to be closed to Asian-Americans.  Part of it is that he's not just crossed a barrier, he's hurdled it and left it in the dust.  Remember, Yao Ming wasn't the first Chinese in the NBA - he was preceded by Mengke Bateer and Wang Zhizhi. If you haven't heard of those people that's good, it means you're a normal human being instead of an Asian sports fanatic.  But it seems that such is the normal track required to break barriers. Someone needs to lay the foundation first. Rosa Parks had to sit so that MLK could walk so that Obama could run. These things take time.  Jeremy Lin last year became the first Taiwanese-American to play in the NBA, and essentially the first Asian-American of the modern era.  This year he became the first Asian American to score 25 points, to notch 10 assists, to hit a game-winning 3, to score 30 points, to register 5 steals, to be on the opening story on SportsCenter etc.  You could argue that Yao Ming set the stage for Jeremy Lin to succeed, but that's completely false.

The Chinese experience and the Chinese-American experience have as much in common as a puma does with a domestic cat (not that one or the other is a puma...).  Even more different were the particular experiences of these two athletes.  Yao Ming was developed by a nation who wanted a sports star. He was destined to be tall and trained for his entire life to become a basketball player.  He came into the league as a skilled center with the support of his entire country and soon won the admiration of his host country. Jeremy Lin grew up in a nation where nobody like him becomes a sports star.  Yao was probably told a thousand times that he'd be the first Chinese star in the NBA.  Lin was probably told a thousand times that he'd never make it to the NBA and that he should quit wasting his time.  This was probably reinforced after he got into Harvard, where starring on the varsity basketball team could easily have been something that would look good on his resume after he graduated and started applying to real jobs. He was probably told many times to get realistic, that he was Asian and he wasn't going to be an NBA star.  Jeremy must have had so much faith in God, confidence in himself and so much love for the game to have kept his dream alive.  And now that he's reached his dream, Asian-American kids all over can somewhat realistically dream to be like him, if not Yao Ming.

I first learned about Jeremy Lin when he was a sophomore at Harvard. A graduate from my high school, Dan McGeary, made his way onto the Harvard squad that year and I occasionally checked their box scores to see what he was up to. I found his last name listed alongside some guy named Lin. Lin? Was he Chinese? Really? I thought to myself, wow Harvard would have an Asian basketball player.  Turns out he was their top scorer and had had quite a successful high school career.  Pretty cool - by this point he was already the most successful Asian-American basketball player I'd ever been aware of. I kept following him intermittently throughout his career. His senior year was a good one, where he made highlights by hitting a ridiculous buzzer-beating three while getting fouled to beat William & Mary, then play great games in losses against UConn, Georgetown (hell yeah) and Boston College. I realized he was legit and would have a real chance to make the NBA.  When he got signed by Golden State, this made ripples among my Asian-American basketball friends. I believed then that he was good enough to be in the NBA, but that he'd been signed because he was a Bay Area kid who'd bring in a ton of Asian fans.  I bet you NBA executives considered themselves very liberal for believing that this kid deserved to be the NBA despite being Asian.  At the same time, they never figured he'd actually significantly help them win games. He was a competent guy they could throw in 5-10 minutes a game and not feel embarrassed in doing so.

It's that kind of racial prejudice that I think Jeremy really had to battle, and has probably been a major factor in why there was no Asian professional baller before now.  The media has been highlighting the racial slurs that Lin occasionally encountered on the floor, everything from "sweet and sour pork!" to the C-word.  But while those are inflammatory, they are temporary blows. Those racists are obviously ignorant and hateful, easily vilified and dismissed. Far more influential are the offhand comments that compassionate liberal people make that unintentionally limits what Asian-Americans feel they can do. It's the way people take for granted that Asians are supposed to be good at math and maybe not so good at sports. It's the way people think they can make casual racial jokes about Asian-Americans because they don't perceive there to be a history of institutional oppression against Asians in this country as there has been against blacks, and because they perceive Asians to be doing fine socioeconomically.  There's a lot of reasons for this attitude, which I discussed here, and while it isn't the worst issue facing the world at the moment, it still isn't right. The Jeremy Lin bonanza has alerted the America media to one issue, whether or not Asians and Asian jokes are held to different standards, sparked by Jason Whitlock's stupid twitter post and a douchebag of an ESPN.com employee (for the record, I don't think the news anchor meant anything insulting, and he didn't need to be suspended). There is a lot that I can say on this topic (and a lot that I have said) but I think we can agree that much of the American public could learn more about Asian-Americans. Anyway Jeremy had to progress through his career constantly as an oddity and the source of countless jokes. He would have had to match each joke with a bucket, work extra hard to overwhelm teammates, coaches and scouts skeptical that an Asian could succeed in basketball. Is it any surprise that he's developed such swag, confidently calling his own play and pulling up for the game-winning 3 at the end of the Toronto game?

In truth, I believe the impact of genetics is considerably overrated.  They obviously exist, otherwise the average male height in China (5'6") wouldn't be so much lower than in Denmark (5'11"). But genetics are complicated, and some phenotypes that we try to assign to genes such as intelligence and athleticism, are WAY too complicated to be so simply understood.  In addition, the genetic diversity of perceived "races" like Han Chinese are dramatically underplayed. But if genetics is less tied to athletic success than we think it is, and genetics less tied to race than we think it is, then how do you explain the relative homogeneity of these leagues, especially the NBA?  I think that is instead a testament to the incredible power of culture and the environment in which we grow up.  While natural talent is often easy to see in sports, it only manifests itself after proper training. After all, a great predictor for a country's Olympic medal performance is its GDP.  It really should be less of a surprise that there is a 6'3" athletic Taiwanese-American guard in the NBA but that it took so long.

In short Jeremy Lin is precisely one example of what I truly believe the world needs (my post on this). We needed someone like him to show that a typical Chinese-American can become an NBA star, that Chinese-Americans are not intrinsically unathletic.  And we need others like him. South Asians are perhaps even more unrepresented on the American sports scene, which should surprise everyone in HKUPA who has been skied by Rumi. We need more people attempting to do things they previously thought impossible, until future generations have to study history to understand the meaning of the word "stereotype."

As to his reception here, if anything it's being underplayed. People think it's cool, but the NBA isn't as huge in Hong Kong and I don't think people understand the situation well enough to know how amazing it is. My coworkers are very impressed by his Harvard economics degree and his finishing moves but only a few are closely following him.  From what I hear, he's unsurprisingly a much more fervent topic in Taiwan, and many people automatically assume he'll represent Chinese Taipei in international competitions.  I expect he will as well, but not before trying as best as he can to represent USA.  As a Chinese-American likely to represent Hong Kong in the World Ultimate this year, representing the US is a no brainer if you can make the team. I obviously have absolutely zero chance of making the US team. Lin has a slight one.  Chinese Taipei has already offered him a spot on the team, so I'm assuming they can work out citizenship requirements.

In the People's Republic of China, I read that his rise is also crazily admired, but not without raising a few questions.  I'm sure government officials wished Lin had more ties to mainland China, but as an American born to Taiwanese immigrants and a fervent Christian, it is unclear how Lin's success will help spread Chinese influence or improve Chinese athletics. Furthermore, his entire life story is completely counter to that of any successful Chinese athlete.  A creative unorthodox point guard who attended to his studies and graduated from university, Lin has little in common with the giants who are identified by the PRC at a young age and plucked away from their homes into training centers and molded into basketball players.  As far as I see it, China is incapable of producing a Jeremy Lin.

All in all I think this story of Jeremy Lin, still in its infant stage, is an amazing one. He is a special, balanced person and I pray that he remains that way. It is useless to deny that his story is amazing in large part due to his race.  Far more useful is to ask why his race matters so much, and what we have to do until it doesn't.

Georgetown as an Asian American

I started this post on May 29, 2010 and now I'm editing it on January 14th, 2011. Perhaps that's some indication of how much I have to say on this subject, or perhaps how difficult it is for me to say it. Without a doubt, transforming my understanding of race, especially my own race, was one of the most important legacies my college education left me. This post is titled Georgetown as an Asian American but it could just as well be titled America as an Asian American, or simply The Asian American Experience.

I would like to say this is not a social critique. I am not trying to make statements I am not qualified to make but simply to explain my own experiences. And on the whole, my own experiences are pretty good. I have never suffered a racist attack, been disparagingly called a racial slur or been directly refused service on account of my race. I don't think my being an Asian American has negatively affected my chances for success in my country and I don't use my race as an excuse for anything.

Growing up, we were taught that race matters.  We were also taught that we are all created equal and to judge a person by his/her character and not their skin color.  However by studying or celebrating race, whether it was stressing the history of Hanukah during the Christmas season or African-American History month, we learned that race matters.  This is good because it does. I’m fine with the education that I had and have issues instead with education that glosses over racial differences.  Ignorance of racial inequality in modern America is inexcusable for US citizens.

However, armed with this knowledge that race matters, our conception of different races would gradually evolve as we became aware of stereotypes. Sure, we were also taught in school that stereotypes were bad, but this didn’t correspond with what we could observe in society. Most of the NBA was black – the stereotype that blacks are good at basketball must be true.  The Asian kids at school were good at math – clearly that was genetic. Even when we saw contradictory examples, our mind ignored them. Stereotypes simplified the big, scary, complicated world and it was easy to choose to believe them.

So coming from a predominantly white town (87%) with a strong Jewish minority (about one third), I went to a diverse but small private high school where there were 3 and a half Asians in my graduating class of 50 – and I’m counting myself as a full Asian. Here I became very self-conscious of stereotypes. I was a strong, unique person, and I didn’t want people to be able to glean details of my life immediately upon meeting me.  Shedding stereotypes was a motivating factor in my decision to drop chess and piano and devote myself to sports.  I worked out obsessively, aiming to make up for my perceived lack of athleticism with hard work. It may seem silly, but I didn’t know if it was possible for me to succeed as an athlete.  I looked around for Asian athlete role models but there were precious few. Even at the ISL level, there were no Asian basketball players. I took this to mean that there was no way I could make varsity basketball.  Now this was true, I wasn’t a good enough dribbler, shooter or passer, but even if there was an Asian basketball star at RL, that wouldn’t have changed my ability.  I had never played organized ball and I didn’t have phenomenal hand-eye coordination – none of that had anything to do with race.  I did see Asians succeed in wrestling, including Milton’s star Ken Lee and our own captain Pete Holland.  I tried to model my own style off of their success, which turned out to be another ill-advised decision.  Ken was a sturdily-built Judo champion and Pete was a flexibility freak – they were not too similar to me athletically, even though they were both Asian.  It wasn’t until senior year when I developed moves that matched my own strengths.

From here I moved on to Georgetown where there were a lot more people of all sorts of backgrounds.  By the end of my freshman year, I discovered that there were two divergent stereotypes of Asians within Georgetown: the white-washed and the fobs.  The white-washed were described as Asians in appearance only, who hung out with white people and didn’t care about their cultural heritage.  The fobs were Asians who only hung out with other Asians and whose mannerisms and interests visibly reflected their cultural heritage.  I found the fob stereotype to be extremely unfamiliar.  At RL, it never crossed my mind to hang out with other Asians.  When there were only two and half others, this seemed bizarre and exclusive.  So who were these people who deliberately sought out other Asian friends? Were they uncomfortable hanging out with other races? But as confusing as the fob stereotype was, I was much more unsettled by the white-washed one.  Clearly, if people were to put one of these two labels on me, they would place that one.  But I didn’t view myself as white-washed – I certainly cared very much about my Chinese upbringing.

Now critics can say that I was white-washed.  Even though I spoke Cantonese and used chopsticks at home and technically was a minority, my social upbringing aligned me much more with the white majority. In outward style, mannerisms, speech and interests, I conformed to that of many white Americans.  There’s some truth in that. Certainly I don’t think the way I was raised qualifies me for affirmative action or that I was disadvantaged.  However, calling me white-washed is a very ignorant viewpoint that glosses over the experiences that all hyphenated Americans share, regardless of upbringing.  An article by Dean Obeidallah reminded me of this.  As Obeidallah writes, whenever an outrageous act of human criminal behavior occurs, minorities inevitably have the same fear: “I hope the guy wasn’t [insert own race].” When Seung-Hui Cho massacred 32 Virginia Tech students, like other Americans I was horrified and saddened. But I was also ashamed because Cho was Asian. I felt the need to prove to other Americans that we as a race were not bad people, that we belonged in this country. And Cho wasn’t even Chinese. I very much doubt that white Americans felt this way when they heard that Jared Loughner was white.  Another shared feature of minorities in this country is our mutual “perking up” of interest when we hear a member of our own race entering uncharted territories.  We naturally follow their careers, but might initially be reluctant to display publicly our support for fear that others will perceive that we are supporting this individual just because we share the same race.

Anyways there I was, not fully comfortable with my identity as an Asian American when I arrived in Beijing on June 1, 2008.  There my conception of race permanently changed. Obviously I saw a society nearly entirely run by Chinese.  Everybody, from the police officers, the street cleaners, the immigration officers, the beggars, the businessmen, the soldiers, the media and the politicians were Chinese.  This struck me because I was used to seeing Chinese people in only limited societal roles.  In the America I grew up in, Asians were either working in restaurants or were successful professionals who had studied hard and done well.  I didn’t know of too many lower middle class Asians or truly influential Asians.  Nor were there many Asians in Hollywood, professional sports, comedy or on the evening news.  But here they did it all, and I was confronted with the simple truth that race was not a physical barrier to any of these professions. There must have been other explanations.  I thought more about the subject.  In my American classrooms, Asians were immediately pegged as nerds.  Here however, there must be Chinese jocks and class clowns and prom kings.

The Chinese people I taught were wholly unaware of the stereotypes we have here in America. They may have had their own stereotypes about themselves, but the fact that they were supposed to be good at math did not affect their life nearly as much as it did mine.  Essentially that summer, I learned all about the power of culture.


In America, many relatively upper class Asian immigrants came to study more a generation or two ago. My mom was one of them. The linguistic and cultural boundaries that they had to overcome was tremendous. My mom wasn't used to learning quietly by rote memory, and was terrified of speaking in class and had to learn painfully how to write research papers before majoring in History.  To that generation, breaking into the white-dominated white collar world was very intimidating.  It was difficult to ace interviews, manage office politics or push people around. It was much easier to study, where hard work paid off in a much more linear manner. And so a lot of Asian immigrants went to law school or medical school, where their degrees were simply too valuable to not merit employment.  I'm forever indebted to my parents, who found success along this path. Perhaps however, this has created both an Asian American stereotype of nerdy bookworms and an Asian American culture of valuing education.  Especially nowadays for poor recent immigrants, education and hard work is seen as the only way out.  As a result, Asians have become so overrepresented at some areas of American life and woefully underrepresented at others.  


This bothered me a little bit, and I tried to live my life as best I could the way I wanted, and defy as many stereotypes as I could along the way.  However, I didn't realize how much effect this could have on young Asian-Americans growing up.  It was my senior year in college on an outreach day to a public high school in Arlington, VA that had hundreds of students of Asian descent. I saw many kids who had grown up like me feeling limited by the stereotypes in our country, but felt even more burdened by them because they were often not of the socioeconomic class that they were assumed to be. Unlike me, many of them felt pressured by their parents to work towards a certain esteemed profession, or rebelled against the high academic standards expected of them. I sensed some teenage angst from kids who felt misunderstood, partly since they couldn't understand themselves. I felt kids who didn't feel like they could complain because they were supposed to be the "model minority." I realized how damaging that term really is, to both other minorities implicitly belittled in the title as well as to the people supposedly exalted by the designation.  I realized then that the environment that Asian-Americans grow up in is extremely varied, evolving, prone to many different responses, and not studied nearly as much as it needs to be.  But culture isn't just about how you're raised, it's also about how society treats you, which is why Asian-Americans do tend to share similar experiences, whether they are wealthy immigrants of Filipino descent or poor 3rd generation Korean-Americans.

The environment in which we grow up is so instrumental to who we are. I now believe that culture is significantly more meaningful than genetics.  Both ultimately have a lot to say with how we look, act, think and believe.  However, lost in this discussion is perhaps the most important trait that defines us as individuals: our individuality. Excuse this recursive definition but I don't know how else to describe precisely those traits that can be wholly attributed to neither genetics nor culture, neither nature nor nurture.  These are the traits that may ultimately determine whether you are a good person or not.  Everyone is an individual first and foremost and should be treated as such.