#LinSanity and the Blackness of Basketball

#LinSanity and the Blackness of Basketball

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackman

Over the last week, there has been significant discussion about how race is playing out within the media and fan reception of Jeremy Lin. Focusing on anti-Asian slurs, prejudice, and stereotypes, the media narrative has not surprisingly provided a simplistic yet pleasurable narrative. Imagining racism as simply bias that can be reduced through exposure and education, the media discourse has erased the powerful ways that sports teaches race and embodies racism.  As Harry Edwards argues, sports recapitulates society, whether it be ideology or institutional organization.

According to Marc Lamont Hill, professor of education at Columbia, “blackness is at the center” of the media’s Linsanity.  Seeing basketball as a space of blackness, “the whole undertone is irony, bewilderment and surprise.”  Harry Edwards, Sociology Professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, highlights the predicable narrative, which reflects the fact that “we live in a niche society.”  This encourages people to “retreat into traditional storylines.” Irrespective of facts or specifics, the deployed media narrative has retreated to a place that depicts the NBA as a black-league defined by athleticism and hip-hop that is changing before our eyes.  The arrival of Jeremy Lin, who the media continues to cast in the role of the “model minority” whose intellect, personality, and overall difference is providing the league with something otherwise unavailable, is constructed through a narrative black-Asian conflict.   

Replicating stereotypes, the undercurrent of the Lin narrative, the media inducted fantasy, has been his juxtaposition to the league’s black players.  “Discussions about the NBA are always unique because the NBA is one of the few spaces in American society where blackness, and specifically black masculinity, is always at the center of the conversation, even when it's not.  Power is often defined by that which is assumed, as opposed to that which is stated,” noted Todd Boyd, Professor of Critical Studies at USC, in an email to me.  “Because black masculinity is the norm in the NBA, it goes without saying. Concurrently any conversation about race in the NBA inevitably refers back to this norm.  In other words, people seldom describe someone as a ‘black basketball player’ because the race of the player is assumed in this construction. 

So any current discussion about Jeremy Lin is taking place within the context of a league and its history where the dominant players have long been black men.  Lin is ‘the other’ as it were, but here the standard is black, not white, as would normally be the case in most other environments.”   From the constant references to his being “humble” and “team-oriented,” to his widely circulated idea that he came out of no where and that his career is one of low expectations and being overlooked, the media narrative has imagined him as the anti-black baller.  The stereotypes of both Asian Americans and blacks guide the media narrative. 

According to Oliver Wang, “Some in the Asian American community are following "Linsanity" with caution, especially as commentators praise Lin for being "hard working," "intelligent" and "humble," words associated with long-standing stereotypes of Asian Americans. Chuck Leung, writing for Slate.com, expressed the fear that "beneath this Linsanity is an invitation for others to preserve these safe archetypes."  Whereas black ballers are defined/demonized with references to selfishness and ego, a sense of entitlement that comes from societal fawning, Lin purportedly provides something else. Compared to black players, who are defined through physical prowess and athleticism, Lin, who is 6’3”, extremely physical and athletic, the media has consistently presented him as a “cerebral player” whose success comes from guile, intestinal fortitude, and determination, seemingly discounting his physical gifts and his talents on the floor.  Marc Lamont Hill noted a report that described Lin as a “genius on the pick n’ roll.” Continuously noting his Harvard education, his high school GPA, his college GPA, and his economics major all advance the narrative of his exceptionalism and his presumed difference from the league’s other (black) players.  

On Weekends with Alex Witt, Sports Illustrated columnist and Lin friend Pablo Torre celebrated Lin as a “student of the game,” and as an anomaly.  Torre noted that Lin watches game footage at halftime, a practice he says isn’t seen within the NBA.   While David West of the Indiana Pacers told me that watching footage is standard practice with the NBA, its usage here is just another example as how Lin is being positioned as NBA model minority and the desired body outside the sports arena.

Reflecting on the nature of this discourse, Hiram Perez in an essay about Tiger Woods, describes “model minority rhetoric” as both homogenizing the Asian American experience through professed stereotypes and celebration of Asian American accomplishments, but “disciplin[ing] the unruly black bodies threatening national stability during the post-civil rights era” (Perez, 2005, p. 226).  The caricatured and stereotyped media story with Lin illustrates this dual process, one that reifies stereotypes concerning Asian Americans while at the same demonizing blackness.  Historically, the model minority discourse has work to juxtapose homogenized identities, cultures, and experiences associated with Asian Americans and African Americans. 

According to Anita Mannur, “in recent years Asian Americans have been praised (in contrast to blacks and Latinos) for having ‘assimilated” so well” (Mannur, 2005, p. 86).  In other words, Asian Americans exists as a “model minority” within the national imagination “because they [seen] are hard workers” who “do not make a fuss, and are not loud” (Mannur, 2005, p. 86).  Likewise, Feagin and Chou argue that, “Asian Americans serve as pawns in the racially oppressive system maintained at the top by whites” (2008, p. 17).  Functioning in a “middling status,” (Feagin and Chou, 2008, p. 17) or as “racial bourgeoisie” (Matsuda qtd. in Feagin and Chou, 2008, p. 17), Asian Americans sit between whiteness and racial otherness within dominant racial discourse.”  The racial fantasy and the narrative offered through much of the media replicates these dominant frames with ease given the racial landscape of the NBA. 

Nancy Abelmann and John Lie encapsulate the interconnectedness between model minority, racism, and the condemnation of blackness: 

The American dream presents a problematic ideal of individual life and community.  More crucially for our purpose, however, the constellation of attitudes and institutions that constitutes the American dream has found a powerful articulation in the contrast between the model minority and the urban underclass: Korean Americans embody the American dream, while African Americans betray its promise.  The ideological constitution and construction of the “black-Korean conflict” should alert us not only the importance of the broader political economy but also to the necessity of rethinking dominant American ideologies (Abelmann & Lie, 1995: 179-180).

We can say that ultimately that America’s love affair the Jeremy Lin narrative is a love of what he purportedly says about America, about the American Dream, and model minority, all of which gains meaning in relationship to blackness.

In this regard, his media power and rhetorical utterances embodies an anti-blackness.  In “Lin is transcending race and helping to shatter stereotypes,” Shaun Powell defines Lin’s powerful cultural message through accepted stereotypes of both Asianness and blackness:

Lin was ignored in high school, wasn't drafted by an NBA team, couldn't stick with two of them, had to beat the bush leagues and then slept on a sofa because he wasn't sure the Knicks would keep him. Then he caught fire overnight. The first time he scored 38 points in a basketball game in his life, it came against Kobe Bryant. Because nothing was ever expected of him, and no fuss was ever raised over him until a week ago, he isn't spoiled by nature. He's humble and free of the jersey-tugging, preening, gesturing, chest-thumping culture that has polluted sports and soured it for many. That's all part of the legend and the lore by now, and that's why he's getting lots of underdog love.

In an article that deploys all of the main themes of the media’s Linsanity  -- (1) Lin as facilitator of colorblindness, as stereotype fighter and dream maker; and (2) as a story of Lin’s fortitude in overcoming discrimination  -- Powell focuses his attention on recycling the model minority myth, a narrative fantasy that garners value through the demonization of black ballers.   Powell describes Lin “as a gift from the basketball gods to the NBA, which in the past dealt with racial backlash when the league was considered too black to appeal to white America. That ‘game’ has changed, and because of Lin, there's plenty more distance between those days and now. Folks who seldom or never watched the NBA are suddenly into the league and wondering what a certain player will do next."  Depicting the league as undesirable and unwatchable for parts of white America, Powell celebrates Lin as anecdote to cure the NBA’s woes.  He makes clear that the problems facing the NBA emanates from the failure of its black players.  While he argues that Lin shatters stereotypes he simultaneously invokes model minority stereotype and the undesirable hip-hop (black) baller. “Because nothing was ever expected of him, and no fuss was ever raised over him until a week ago, he isn't spoiled by nature. He's humble and free of the jersey-tugging, preening, gesturing, chest-thumping culture that has polluted sports and soured it for many. That's all part of the legend and the lore by now, and that's why he's getting lots of underdog love.”   Similarly Jason Whitlock positions Lin as the alternative to hip-hop within the NBA:

Lin's success, even if it disappears, should not be dismissed. There is something to be learned from the results of his play and the absence of two star hip-hop, AAU athletes, 'Melo and Amar'e.

Yes, I played the hip-hop culture card. Hip-hop music is a capitalistic success. Hip-hop culture is an utter failure. The me-first, rebellious, anti-intellect culture directly contradicts all the values taught in team sports and most of the values necessary to sustain a civilized society.

Ignoring the fact that Lin can often be seen at time-outs chest bumping with his teammates, ignoring the fact that he flossed his jersey following a 3-pointer against Dallas, and the fact that he often “opens his mouth to reveal a Now and Later-stained tongue” Powell, Whitlock and others demonstrates the ways in which racial fantasy operates here.  Lin is a product of and reflective of the hip-hop generation ballers yet Powell and others imagine him in opposition to the polluting influences of the league’s black ballers.  Todd Boyd makes this clear:

Consider the stereotypes about NBA players and then consider the stereotypes about Asian Americans in our society.  Much of the public discussion about Lin has been informed, consciously or unconsciously, by the notion of the "model minority," which of course is a stereotype often used in relation to Asian Americans.  This is not Lin saying such things about himself, but what others have projected upon him.  With this in mind, an Asian American from the Bay Area who went to Harvard, is quite vocal about his traditional Christian beliefs, and who got cut a few times before finding his niche, is always going to be easier to support for some people than a rich urban black guy who whose style and whose actions suggest that he is indifferent to the dictates of mainstream society.  Though there are many people who are genuinely proud of Lin for all the right reasons, there are certainly others whose celebration of Lin masks some deeper resentment relative to their own perceptions about black players. 

There is a lot to celebrate with Jeremy Lin.  He is ballin’ and it’s a great story.  The pride and celebration that his success has brought is equally powerful.  Yet, I am increasingly left with a sour taste in my mouth from the persistent efforts to rehash and recycle longstanding stereotypes of both Asian Americans and African Americans.  The celebration of Lin in this context is no celebration at all, but another racial fantasy that validates American exceptionalism and the American Dream.  The media discourse is saying much more about us than Lin himself or his game, and it is this media framing, which is about tiresome as anything else. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness will be published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

Marc Lamont Hill on Jeremy Lin [video]

Marc Lamont Hill talks with CNN's Kyra Phillips about race relations and Jeremy Lin's success with the New York Knicks.

Ebru Today - Dr. David Leonard on "Linsanity" & NBA's Racial Landscape

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

“Truth to Power:”? No Truth or Empowerment in Jason Whitlock’s Tweet

“Truth to Power:”? No Truth or Empowerment in Jason Whitlock’s Tweet

by the Collective | The Feminist Wire | NewBlackMan

We come together to express our collective disappointment over Jason Whitlock’s recent tweet about Jeremy Lin.  We hope that our voices, our analysis, and our anger demonstrates not only our opposition to this sort of rhetoric but the ideologies and stereotypes that provide a foundation for people like Whitlock to stand upon.  His tweet is a symptom of a larger problem and therefore warrants analysis and condemnation in an effort to transform the very culture that produces these sorts of comments each and every day.

***

Perhaps Jason Whitlock is suffering from (L)insanity. Or, perhaps on a much more politically incorrect level, Whitlock is on that bull.

His tweet wraps misogyny, stereotypical phallic fantasy, and race into one awkward 'joke' that provides enough side eye for years to come. Perhaps most disturbing is the crude attempt at humor with little to no purpose and situating it within politics of (ir) respectability. Further complicating (complementing?) the peculiarity of this tweet is the imposition of digital anonymity/privacy of Whitlock and his followers: because I'm behind a screen name (or lack thereof), is it cool to laugh and 'joke' about such sensitive and taboo topics? Is it respectable?

Does Whitlock have (social) responsibility? Damn right. Why wouldn't he? Because, in an offsetting way, Whitlock's crudeness is a representation of the public dismissal of race as a marker of American cultural discourse. And, simultaneously, how jacked it is – Regina Bradley

***

Male professional sports, like the military, have long been valued for its ability to allow talent to flourish, in spite of the realities of race and ethnicity.  Professional sports are often viewed as the most natural of American meritocracies, though such opportunity, as it were, rarely extends beyond the field into the realms of management and ownership.  This is not to suggest that racism, sexism, and homophobia are non-existent in professional sports, but that impact is largely muted by performance.

One location where intolerance remains unfettered, is of course, within the arena of commentary where sports-talk radio and the comments sections of sports sites recall the kind of racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric that many believed went underground generations ago.  Ironically such rhetoric has proved big-business for big Media, creating celebrity in hosts and sports journalists, whose bad behavior is celebrated as “realness” and who somehow think that thoughtful and reasoned analysis and commentary are towing some invisible line of political correctness. 

In this regard, Jason Whitlock is not alone—his now infamous idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic rants are part of his brand, and it’s a brand that apparently serves him and his employer Fox Sports, very well.  Bless them.  And while I feel no real need to compare Whitlock’s recent comments about Jeremy Lin—as misogynistic as they were racists—to the ill-advised comments on twitter by journalist Roland Martin, I would at least expect that the same fervor in which GLAAD demanded that CNN punish Martin, and that many of Martin’s Black peers demanded that Martin be reinstated by his employer, would be deployed to protect a young Taiwanese-American basketball player, who is simply doing his job to the best of his ability within a meritocratic structure that we all claim to value – Mark Anthony Neal

***

Appalled. I find myself rendered nearly speechless in the face of the harmful and repulsive comments of Jason Whitlock and many others with regards to Jeremy Lin. We, however, cannot remain silent about such racist and misogynistic comments. Relying upon deeply infuriating racial, sexual, and gender stereotypes to “celebrate” Lin illuminates not only the absurdity of a post-racial society or national, cultural imaginary, but makes apparent the most disgusting and deeply entrenched stereotypes that are foundational to social and cultural discourses on race in the United States. To merely disregard Whitlock’s or other comments about Lin that pivot around deeply problematic racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes as “jokes” or “harmless sports banter” minimizes the dehumanizing nature of such comments. In the same breath that we laud Lin, let us also collectively deplore the words of those who rely upon damaging stereotypes in their commentary - Treva Lindsey

***

There are so many levels on which Whitlock's (knee)jerk attempt at satire was sad and wrong; most of them have been covered by others, including the boorishness of greeting a player who's risen to the toughest of challenges by ceremonially unmanning him; the pathetic symbolism of a man whose race has historically suffered because of sexual mythology unleashing the tools of such distortion and degradation on a man of another race that has so suffered; the almost antique misogyny of Whitlock's phrasing and innuendo. So I'll focus on something I haven't seen raised: The enormity of Whitlock's imposition of the darkest stereotypes of the modern celebrity athlete on a young man who clearly is anything but. Lin is humble, hard-working, clean-cut almost to a fault -- and a deeply, deeply devout Christian who has spoken of joining the ministry after his playing days are over.

Forget the ridiculous anatomical slur: The suggestion that he might celebrate a victory he dedicated to God by having random sex with a "lucky lady" is almost certainly what would offend and horrify Lin more.

Now, given that his employers at Fox will likely lose little if any sleep over Whitlock's arrant racial offense, the question I ask is this: Will FSN -- whose sister networks carp endlessly about the war on faith -- punish Whitlock for demeaning Lin's deep, professed Christian beliefs?

If so, I'll take it - Jeff Yang

***

Jason Whitlock's tweet brings me back to a time in the early 70's when I was playing on a football team comprised of players from Harlem, the Upper West Side and an Italian Restaurant near Lincoln Center. The only way people could communicate was exchanging ethnic slurs and boasting about sexual conquests, a discourse that reduced me to total silence. It is sad to see how much that atmosphere, so deeply entrenched nearly 40 years ago, still dominates sports journalism and shapes the way men immersed in competitive sports construct their masculinity, irrespective of their racial or cultural background. Needless to say, that atmosphere creates a camaraderie rooted in fear and suspicion on the field. It also promotes violence off the field toward those who are targets, especially women, who are viewed as appropriate subjects of sexual aggression following sports victories, and inhibits real relationships based on candor and trust. In short, it is really bad, and really sad. I had hoped that younger people had moved beyond what I had grown up with, but apparently not. Predatory masculinity is alive and well and living in America –Mark Naison

***

At what point will we resist re-assigning markers of difference that have worked to asphyxiate our identities as people of color for centuries? And, when will we realize that our deployment and projection of racial fantasies and stereotyping toward our selected “Others” not only destabilizes our ability to flourish as humans, but also are antithetical to our own personal and political interests? Further, on what occasion will black men and boys construct masculinities that are courageous enough to loosen the yoke of cultural (mis)re-presentations and broad enough to embrace the complex subjectivities of both self and others?

Jason Whitlock’s recent tweet regarding Jeremy Lin is obscene. And for those who want to dismiss it as normal sports talk, shame on you! Whitlock’s tweet is part and parcel of a larger, inter-textual grand narrative on classificatory violence, which aims to categorize things that feel out of place—in order to bring us back into a so-called normal state—or worse, get rid of the “problem” by thrusting it into the realm of “the spectacle.” Does this sound familiar? It should. Herein lies where identities, of both the signified and the signifier, get reinvented. However, in the present age of hyper-social-media, it is also where public discourse turns into a theater of fetishized display, where bodies serve as indisputable evidence for racial, sexual, ethnic, and gendered difference. This is where the signifier hopes to mark himself as “normal.” However, sadly for Whitlock, he too is part of the joke. He too is problematically fixated at a level of genitalia; no longer a black man, but a penis (pun intended) - Tamura A. Lomax

***

Jason Whitlock’s tweet fails not only the racism/sexism test but also the satire test. The racism is obvious--though it should be pointed out that the alternatively “positive” and “negative” stereotypes of Asians and Blacks (e.g. nerds v. athletes) have always been designed to complement each other and reinforce white supremacy. I might even be more offended by the pathetic attempt to be funny. It seems that any time someone breaks through a major public color barrier that America is required to go through an initial cycle of exorcising all of the most tired stereotypes before we can adjust to a whole new condition. So congratulations, Jason, you made the list alongside the birthers and Fuzzy Zoeller’s “fried chicken” (he forgot to add “pad thai”) comment about Tiger Woods – Scott Kurashige

***

Jason Whitlock might as well have pulled up the corners of his eyes and said, “ching, chong, ching, chong,” like the kids who used to taunt me on the playground as a kid. (And I'm not even Chinese; I'm Filipina).  In less than fifteen words, he managed to dredge up the most tired racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes associated with “oriental” people: the hypersexuality and ready availability of Asian women, and the effeminacy and queerness of Asian men. His comments play into the longstanding techniques of divide and conquer that have pit people of African and Asian descent against each other since colonial times. We have much more to gain in working together to combat white supremacy, not just in the United States, but also across the globe. Whitlock's comment does nothing to encourage the development of these types of solidarities – Theresa Runstedtler

***

U.S. racial discourses remain arrested in that primal scene of childhood violence: the schoolyard. For so many of us, the schoolyard “wisdoms” about which Jason Whitlock tweets are not just a bad memory but a daily reality. It is especially painful to hear such “wisdoms” repeated by a black man. Whitlock’s chauvinism denies Jeremy Lin’s body the capacity to represent the nation as well as more obviously the NBA and the high stakes capitalist world of sports celebrity. Bodies like Lin’s can never measure up. But in a sense neither can Whitlock’s. This was the terrible irony that left me feeling more saddened and broken than angry. Whitlock participates in the very logic that demeans his humanity. His comment suggests that he has embraced racist notions of black sexual prowess as the sorry (mis)measure of his own masculinity and self-worth—his fantasies about Lin’s body, inversely reciprocal, certainly speak to such unhappy investments – Hiram Perez

***

Jason Whitlock’s racially insensitive tweet about rising Asian-American NBA superstar Jeremy Lin betrays an investment in an impoverished Black masculinity narrative that pivots upon the erroneous and scientifically disproven idea that Black men have bigger penises than every other group. Whitlock’s need to re-establish Black masculine potency vis-à-vis narratives of athletic and sexual dominance suggests the presence of a threat. But why is the presence of an Asian American kid who can ball his ass off so threatening? Perhaps because Lin’s presence in the Black male dominated space of the NBA rightly demands we rethink our tired and dangerous investment in the myth of biological Black male athletic superiority. Coupled with the homophobic tweets of news commentator Roland Martin, it is clear that the logic of hypersexual Black masculinity is dangerous (e.g. lynching, myth of the Black male rapist, etc) not only to Black men but also to other subjugated masculine subjects, be they Asian men, gay men (Black and otherwise) and women, who become the targets of straight Black men’s misguided need to re-establish dominance – Brittney Cooper

***

What makes Whitlock’s tweet funny? First, of course, there is the nod to the social construction of Asian men as feminine and sexually passive, which then gets played out in our (oh so necessary) cultural discourse on the size of their penises. So that’s funny. Then, there is our collective racial imagination of basketball as a sport in which Black men demonstrate a certain aggressive kind of masculine performance. So the presence of a Chinese American in this sport demands that he be assessed for his ability to perform race consistent with our imaginations, both on the court and off. He impresses us with his on-court moves, but we are obsessed with whether an Asian male can compete with (naturally) virile Black ballers when it comes to really laying it down. So that’s funny, right? Oh, and of course, we all know women can’t help but fight over dick, especially the dick of a basketball player, which, as we’ve already concluded, is huge because it's black.

Unless…ha ha… it’s not. And what (all) women really want at the end of the night is to be “lucky” enough to score a big dick, so they can feel the “pain.” So Whitlock’s tweet is also about this woman lying there prostrate, sexually frustrated because Lin couldn’t deliver, which, of course, she should have known because he’s Asian. So once again, women are not only insatiable in bed, but are also naïve, particularly about sex. Which just confirms what we already know about women. And that is hilarious, no? – Michael J. Dumas

***

It makes me wonder about you, Mr. Whitlock, that you assume Jeremy Lin should celebrate his stellar performance on the court last night by inflicting “pain” on a woman. Is that how you celebrate your tweeting achievements? It is amazing that you could be so unaware of the irony of racially stereotyping Lin’s anatomy and linking it to sexual violence, given the ugly history in which “southern justice” has been justified again and again through fantasies of black men, their genitalia, and their supposed propensity to inflict sexual pain on women. But then again, given your “achievements” as a sportswriter in the past, your cluelessness is not all that surprising – Anoop Mirpuri

***

My response is flavored by spending the past few days immersed in a discussion of the liberation that is to be experienced with Post-Blackness. In the age of social media, I remain amazed by the lengths bullies, masquerading as “writers,” are willing to take to demonstrate their ability to use micro-aggressive means to exert their supremacy over others. As a Baby-Boomer, I’m left with questions. Is social media a mechanism used by the socially inept to exercise their “voice” that is impossible in a face-to-face environment? Does some social media exacerbate the breadth and depth of stupidity possessed by the owner? Does it foster stupidity; perpetuate it? I believe that all of the world via the blogosphere is a stage and juxtapose this medium against an old school warning that I received in the 1980s to avoid emulating a colleague who was a wild cannon in the work place because with that person it was always “what comes up, comes out.” But in those days, what you said was only heard by those within hearing distance. Should you think before you tweet? Jason Whitlock’s “performance” at perpetuating racial stereotypes is flawed on way too many levels to begin to articulate – Valerie L. Patterson

***

Jason Whitlock, who describes himself on his twitter page as “too honest” and someone who “speaks truth to power” once again showed the power in speaking hurtful untruths based on stereotypes, assumptions, and systemically produced biases.  Jason Whitlock has made an entire career in demonizing Others, disseminating the ideologies of white supremacy, and peddling sexism.  He once refereed to Serena Williams as an “unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber, a byproduct of her unwillingness to commit to a training regimen and diet that would have her at the top of her game year-round.”  This is the same man, who has described “hip-hop culture” as “nothing more than prison culture,” and who once provided this assessment of black youth:

We have a problem in the black community, and it didn't make its debut at All-Star Weekend Vegas. What was impossible to ignore in Vegas was on display in Houston, Atlanta and previous All-Star locations. With the exception of Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, it's been on display nearly every time we've gathered in large groups to socialize in the past 15 or so years. The Black Ku Klux Klan shows up in full force and does its best to ruin our good time. Instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white Ts and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members. Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us. Our fear makes them stronger. Our silence empowers them. Our lack of courage lets them define who we are. Our excuse-making for their behavior increases their influence and enables them to recruit more freely. We sing their racist songs, gleefully call ourselves the N-word, hype their celebrity and get upset when white people whisper concerns about our sanity. And whenever someone publicly states that the Black KKK is terrorizing black people, black neighborhoods, black social events and glorifying a negative, self-destructive lifestyle, we deny and blame the Man. I don't want to do it anymore.

The recent tweet about Jeremy Lin is a continuation of more of the same from Mr. Whitlock, leaving me to wonder if he would be better-suited writing stump speeches for the GOP or better yet keeping his “honesty” to himself – David J. Leonard

***

Whitlock's tweet was a cheap shot of the basest proportions. He's an embarrassment to the writing establishment – Oliver Wang

Contributors

Regina Bradley is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Florida State University

Britney Cooper is a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University

Michael J. Dumas is an assistant professor of Education at New York University

Scott Kurashige is the Director of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at University of Michigan

David J. Leonard is an associate professor of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University

Treva Lindsey is an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Missouri

Tamura A. Lomax holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Vanderbilt University is co-founder of The Feminist Wire

Anoop Mirpuri is an assistant professor of English at Drew University

Mark Anthony Neal is professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University

Mark Naison is professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University

Valerie L. Patterson is an assistant professor of Public Administration at Florida International University

Hiram Perez is an assistant professor of English at Vassar College

Theresa Runstedtler is an assistant professor of American Studies at SUNY Buffalo

Oliver Wang is an assistant professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach

Jeff Yang is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Online and can be heard regularly on WNYC 's “The Takeaway.”

Pride and Prejudice: Jeremy Lin and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

Pride and Prejudice: Jeremy Lin and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

The recent success and national visibility afforded to Jeremy Lin has both inspired Asian Americans and has been driven by the adoration and pride he elicits from some within the community.  Whether on twitter, Facebook, or in the stadiums, it is clear that Lin is not simply a national phenomena but a treasure for the Asian American community. 

According to Jamilah King, “regardless of how the rest of the season goes for Lin, and the Knicks, his moment in the spotlight is an important time to reflect on how the country views its Asian American athletes.”  Whereas past Asian athletes, whether it be Yao Ming or Ichiro captured the global Asian Diaspora’s imagination, Lin is the most widely recognized Asian American athlete on the American team sport scene.  Timothy Dalrymple highlights the appeal of Lin to Asian American males:

He particularly has a following amongst Asian-Americans.  And some Asian-American young men, long stereotyped as timid and unathletic, nerdy or effeminate or socially immature — have fought back tears (which may not help with the stereotype, but is understandable under the circumstances) as they watched Jeremy Lin score 25 points, 7 assists and 5 rebounds for the New York Knicks.

In “Asian Americans energized in seeing Knicks' Jeremy Lin play,” J. Michael Falgoust elucidates his cultural power within the Asian American community in quoting the thoughts of several different people:

"I don't care about the outcome. I just want to see him in action. He's as good of an Asian American athlete as there is” — Rose Nguyen

"I'm so proud. I don't care if he is Chinese or Korean. I had to see him … my boyfriend has been talking about him so much" — Christine Lee

"I'm really excited. He breaks so many stereotypes. And my friends are just as excited. If you go to my Facebook feed, it's all Jeremy Lin. I like that he plays smart. But then he's from Harvard. So that is expected. He is also humble. He reminds me a lot of Derrick Rose, who's always crediting teammates” — Andrew Pipathsouk

Andrew Leonard similarly argues that Lin’s popularity amongst Asian Americans is emblematic of the power of social media and also the pride that athletic success garners for Asian Americans, otherwise seen as “nerds” not “jocks.”  While problematically invoking the language of “genetics” that erases Lin’s tremendous athleticism/speed, Leonard concludes that Lin inspires Asian American kids who yearn for a masculine role model given persistent invisibility and anti-Asian racism within the public square. “He’s a triumph of will over genetic endowment, a fact that makes him inspiring to an entire generation of Californian kids restless with their model minority shackles,” he notes.

On Monday, the social media world was also getting worked up about Michigan Republican Senate hopeful Pete Hoekstra’s racist Super Bowl ad,featuring a Chinese woman (labeled “yellowgirl” in the HTML code for the Web version) gloating over all the jobs her country was taking from the U.S. Once thrown into the 24/7 crazy cultural mashup perpetual motion machine, it didn’t take long before anger about that ad ran head on into Jeremy Lin pride. I have seen tweets urging Jeremy Lin to run for the Republican nomination for the Michigan senate seat, tweets warning that the only American jobs in danger from Asians are those belonging to New York Knick starting point guards, and even a tweet riffing off Kobe Bryant’s self-identification as “black mamba” — Jeremy Lin is suddenly  the “yellow mamba.”

Lin has trended #1 on twitter on three successive game days, was top-10 searched items on Sina Weibo and is all the talk of the sports world.  For the moment, it is Jeremy Lin’s world and we are all just living in it.

                                         

The pride and possibility reflects the broader erasure and invisibility of Asian Americans within popular culture (minus this year’s Top Chef).  “Asians are nearly invisible on television/movies/music, so any time I see an Asian on TV or in the movies, I feel like I’ve just spotted a unicorn, even though usually, I see them being portrayed as kung-fu masters/socially awkward mathematical geniuses/broken-English-speaking-fresh-off-the-boat owner of Chinese restaurant/nail salon/dry cleaners,” writes one blogger. “Anyway, this phenomenon is 10x worse in sports.  While there has been some notable progress with Asians in professional baseball, Asians are all but non-existent in the big three sports in the US (football, basketball, baseball).”   

Lin breaks down, or at least penetrates, the walls that have excluded Asian Americans from popular culture.  The pride, adoration and celebration reflect this history of exclusion, a history of erasure, and invisibility.  The efforts to link Lin to Nike’s “Witness” campaign is illustrative in that we are all witness, maybe for the first, time in history, of an Asian American sports hero, someone who challenges and defies expectations and stereotypes.

Amid the invisibility is a history of feminization of Asian American males.  When present within media and popular culture, Asian American men have been represented as asexual, weak, physically challenged, and otherwise unmasculine.  Sanctioning exclusion and denied citizenship, the white supremacist imagination has consistently depicted Asian male bodies as effeminate.  The entry of Lin into the dominant imagination reflects a challenge to this historic practice given the power of sports as a space of masculine prowess.  

Whether shock or celebration, Lin’s cultural power rests in his juxtaposition to the stereotyped Asian American male.  According to Timothy Dalrymple, “their astonishment at the sight of Jeremy Lin outperforming the other players, their consistent references to how exhausted he must be, and how “magical” a night he’s having (rather than a natural result of talent and hard work) suggests that they’ve bought into the stereotype of the physically inferior Asian-American male.”

Lin’s recent ascendance is not simply about success or dominance within the sports world, a place defined by masculine prowess.  It reflects the cultural and gendered meaning of basketball.  Lin is excelling in a world defined by black manhood, an identity the white racial frames construct through physicality, strength, speed and swagger.  Unlike other players who burst onto the American scene (Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian, Wang ZhiZhi), Lin is a guard, who has found success because of his athleticism and skills as opposed to his presumed freakish stature.  “The best part is how viscerally pleasurable it is to watch Lin play: His game is flashy, almost showoffy, and requires him to have guts, guile and flair in equal measure,” writes Will Leich. “The drama of it is, it's obvious, what's most fun for him. It is all you could possibly want as a feel-good story. “

In other words, Lin’s appeal comes from his ability to ball like a street player to face off and dominate against black players at “their own game.”  The celebration of Lin as a challenge to the denied masculinity afforded to Asian American males reflects the ways in which black masculinity is defined in and through basketball culture.  While surely offering fans the often-denied sporting masculinity within the Asian body, the power of Jeremy Lin rests with his ability to mimic a basketball style, swagger and skill associated with black ballers. 

Pride emanates from the sense of masculinity afforded by Lin, a fact that emanates from stereotypical constructions of black masculinity.  “Through no fault of his own, Lin stands at a bombed-out intersection of expected narratives, bodies, perceived genes, the Church, the vocabulary of destinations and YouTube,” wrote Jay Caspian Kang, who’s Asian American, about Lin’s electrifying play at Harvard. “What Jeremy Lin represents is a re-conception of our bodies, a visible measure of how the emasculated Asian-American body might measure up to the mythic legion of Big Black superman” (cited by King in Colorlines)

Fulfilling a fantasy for a “white American fantasy of an athletic prowess that can trump African-American hegemony in the league” (Farred, p. 56) and the appeal of a masculinity defined by its association with blackness, the celebrations, parties, and various public adoration are wrapped in these ideas of race, gender, and nation.   Writing about Yao Ming, Grant Farred, in Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA, reminds us about these issues:

The body of the athlete, which has a long history of standing as the body of the nation, is simultaneously reduced and magnified in the Yao event, in its micro-articulation (Asian-American), it is asked to refute the myth of the feminized ethnic by challenging – and redressing the historic wrongs endured – those ‘American’ bodies that have been dismissed the physicality of the Asian male.  As representative of the Chinese nation, Yao is expected to remain a national subject even as his basketball heritage seems difficult to unlearn and continues to disadvantage him in the NBA. . . . In his representation of the ‘Chinese people,’ Yao will not become an NBA – which is to say ‘African American’ – player.  He will not trash talk, he will not develop an ‘offensive personality,’ in more senses than one, and to his detriment, he, will not become more ‘physical’ (62)”

Lin is confined by this trap, so his wagging tongue (that was blue during one game), his trash talk, his swagger, his reverse layups, his flashy speed, and now his dunk, all confirms that Lin isn’t just a basketball player but a baller.  The celebration is thus, wrapped up in the dominant configurations of blackness, and how hegemonic visions of black masculinity confer a certain amount power to Lin.  According to Dave Zirin, Lin’s power rests with his transgressive play: “Asian-Americans, in our stereotypical lens, are supposed to be studious and reserved. We would expect nothing less than that the first Asian-American player would be robotic and fundamentally sound; their face an unsmiling mask.”  While Lin is not the first Asian-American to play professional basketball in the U.S. (Rex Walters, Wataru Misaka, and Raymond Townsend – h/t Scott Kurashige), Zirin’s analysis points to the larger ways that race operates in this context. 

Lin’s appeal comes because he defies people’s expectations about Asian Americans because he is excelling and playing in a way that people expect from and authentically associate with black players. Zirin goes further to argue, “Instead, we have Jeremy Lin threading no-look passes, throwing down dunks and, in the most respected mark of toughness, taking contact and finishing baskets.” With this analysis we see how race not only defines Lin, but the NBA as a cultural space.  His power rests with his ability to “become” black within the national imagination as baller, yet remain outside the prison/prism of the black-white binary.  Or as Oliver Wang notes, the fanfare illustrates how “hegemonic masculinity is constructed whereupon whiteness hides behind a cloak of black desire.” 

Lin is therefore not breaking down stereotypes (maybe denting them), but in many ways re-inscribing them.  Celebrated as “intelligent” and as “a hustler,” his success has been attributed his intelligence, his basketball IQ, and even his religious faith.  His athleticism and the hours spent on the court are erased from the discussion.  Moreover, in positioning him as the aberration, as someone worthy of celebration, the dominant media frame reinforces the longstanding stereotypes of Asians as unathletic nerds.Likewise, the juxtaposition of his identity, body, and basketball skills to the NBA’s black bodies simultaneously reinforces the dominant inscriptions of both blackness and Asianness.   While J-Lin brings something new to the table – an Asian American basketball role model;  Knicks’ victories – we must not forget the many things that remain in place.  

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.