Why Jeremy Lin Matters

Why Jeremy Lin Matters

HE GOT GAME, TOO: Knicks guard Jeremy Lin drives by Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant at Madison Square Garden on February 10. Lin Scored 38 points, and the Knicks defeated the Lakers 92-85. (Photo: John Angelillo/Newscom)

Even if you do not follow professional sports, you have probably heard that there is a whole lot of fuss going on about someone named Jeremy Lin. He’s the 23-year-old New York Knicks point guard who has transformed from last man on the bench to the team’s savior faster than you can say “Linsanity.”

A man of committed Christian faith, Lin has attributed his successes to God and directed all accolades towards his fellow teammates, prompting television commentators to dub him “the humble hero from Harvard,” which by the way is an unlikely source for professional basketball players. Born in Los Angeles, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, Lin experienced success at the high school and collegiate levels, yet was not drafted by any NBA team. Instead, he bounced around the league until he finally landed with the Knicks late last year.

Just a little over a week ago, Lin was sleeping on his brother’s couch and wondering if the Knicks were going to keep him on the team. But as injuries whittled down the Knicks’ roster, Lin’s number was called against the New Jersey Nets on February 4th. He scored an improbable 25 points, started in the next four games, and repeated the seemingly impossible by scoring in double digits each time, including 38 points in a prime-time, nationally-televised performance against Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant.

It’s an amazing, Cinderella-esque story. Some have even made parallels between Lin and Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow due to their shared Christian beliefs as well as their improbable success. But what truly sets Lin apart in his profession, besides his Ivy League education and unexpected rise, is his Asian American background.

Judging by the frenzied response of the Knicks’ multiethnic market of fans, it doesn’t matter that Lin is Asian American. Most see him as a superhero, swooping in from out of nowhere to save a seemingly doomed season. Others may be thinking he’s winning despite being Asian American.

But, make no mistake about it, Lin does mean something particularly special to those of us in the Asian American community. I have not seen Asian Americans galvanized in this way for anyone before Jeremy Lin. Not Barack Obama, not Tiger Woods in his pre-scandal days. If Asian Americans formed a political party, Jeremy Lin would clearly be the uncontested nominee for president.

The role of Lin’s ethnicity in this extraordinary narrative cannot be ignored. Coaches and scouts were quite likely unwilling to give Lin a chance purely based on his ethnicity. Phil Taylor wrote about Lin in SI.com, “I knew on some level that part of the reason Lin was so quickly dismissed was that NBA people had a hard time believing that an Asian-American could play point guard in the NBA.” It’s a testimony to Lin’s tenacity and faith that he refused to accept the reality that he saw around him. He had never seen an Asian American man play in the NBA, but he stayed fixed on his goal of being a professional basketball player, even when no one else was giving him the chance.

People have been describing Lin’s breakthrough as a “Jackie Robinson” moment, and perhaps one of the eventual results of Lin’s success is that in a decade or so, we’ll start to see more Asian Americans in the NBA. But what I find fascinating about “Linsanity” is how the Jeremy Lin story reveals racial and ethnic differences amongst us and illuminates assumptions that still persist.

For one thing, Asian culture is collectivistic rather than individualistic, which essentially means that it fosters thinking such as “we’re all in this together,” and “what happens to you, happens to me.” When an Asian American reaches a particular level of accomplishment and achievement, we all feel the sense of sharing in his or her successes  (and the reverse is also true, such as the deep shame many of us experienced after Seung-Hui Cho went on his murderous rampage at Virginia Tech).

In Asian American churches, adults go by the appellations “Auntie” and “Uncle,” further communicating to the next generation that we are all just one big family. Given Lin’s clear profession of faith, Asian American Christians in particular embrace him both as fellow ethnic kin as well as a fellow believer. He is a “brother,” in every sense of the word. And so when he does well, it reflects positively on the larger family of Asian Americans everywhere.

MORE THAN BASKETBALL: Jeremy Lin's significance as an Asian American athlete playing at the highest level of his game goes beyond mere sports.

But why do Asian Americans need the collective ego boost that is coming from one, singular professional sports figure? Aren’t they already considered the “model minority,” rightly or wrongly? Don’t Asian Americans easily assimilate into the larger culture, just like Lin is fitting seamlessly into his team of non-Asians?

Often when I write or speak about matters of race, I invariably hear questions like this, implying that we now live in a color-blind society, that racial conflicts are relics from the past. But I think the excitement that Asian Americans are demonstrating over Lin reflects the exact opposite: that racial and ethnic differences still matter a great deal. As Michael Luo reflected in the New York Times on his own thrill over Lin’s success, “It boils down to a welter of emotions from finally having someone I can relate to enter the public consciousness.”

If you think race does not matter in the 21st century, you likely have never been that lone ethnic minority walking into a room. Asian Americans (and other minorities) know and feel it instantly when they are the only non-white face in any gathering. We feel it whenever we walk into a classroom, a conference room, a coffee shop … a church.

To add further to our sense of marginalization even in the Christian subculture, when none of the role models presented to us in Christian contexts look like someone we can relate to, little by little we begin to doubt that our voices will ever be heard, that we are valued contributors, that anyone even notices we exist at all. If all we ever see in the pulpits, at the podiums, or on the covers of magazines and books are the faces and names of majority America, then those institutions and places of influence are missing a significant part of the American story.

Jeremy Lin gives us a great story that we can all rally around — America loves nothing more than an underdog tale. And the fact that Lin has gained such widespread, mainstream acceptance has filled Asian Americans with a collective sense of sheer, unbridled joy and pride. Lin’s popularity has suddenly given Asian Americans a gift we have not always experienced: acceptance, from a society that still mistakes us as outsiders.

Talk to any Asian American, and you will likely find that he or she has a story to tell about being on the receiving end of a racist epithet or some racially charged comment. Just the other day, I was speaking with a Korean-American named Susie who recounted a recent experience in a Wal-Mart parking lot. As she walked toward the store with her family, a pickup truck sped by with its passengers yelling “Hi-yaah!” at her and her family in a cartoonish mockery of martial arts screams. The truck then passed them, turned around, and returned for a repeat performance before peeling away. On the night of Lin’s incredible 38-point performance against the L.A. Lakers, I watched my Twitter feed spew comment after comment celebrating Lin while still regarding him as a foreigner. “So excited #jeremylin speaks solid English,” read one such tweet.

Jeremy Lin’s recent successes won’t wipe away all the years of racial stereotyping, all the ways that ceilings and misconceptions still block the paths of Asian Americans and other minorities in countless institutions, the church included. But shared appreciation for his extraordinary story is binding together both his fellow Asian American “brothers and sisters” as well as his fans from every tribe, tongue and nation. I don’t think the fact that Lin’s team is located in one of the most multicultural cities in the world happened by chance. Behind all the amazing events surrounding this young man’s rise is a deeper purpose, and I believe there’s way more to this story than just basketball.

Ethnic Diversity in an Un-diverse City

Josh and Alyssa Canada

Josh and Alyssa Canada

In early December, my wife, Alyssa, and I moved to Huntington, Indiana, a town of 17,000 that’s about 98 percent white. Alyssa is Taiwanese American and I’m African American, so this was a bit of a shock for both of us.

Although we both attended Taylor University in nearby Upland (another 98 percent-white community), we were in college then. Our community was students, staff, and professors. Though the student body was predominately white (only 7 percent American ethnic minority), with just under 2,000 enrolled, most people of color didn’t feel isolated. Additionally, the town was so small that we didn’t spend much time in civic life or patronizing businesses. To grocery shop, go out to eat, and engage with the broader community we ventured to Marion or Muncie. Although we were in rural white America, as college students, the town was not our home. In Huntington we aren’t afforded that exemption; we are community members in a northern Mayberry. We shop. We go out to eat. We have friends. We go to church. We are citizens of the City of Huntington. For two ethnic minorities who are interracially married, this foray into rural white life has been an interesting journey.

A few weeks ago Alyssa and I were engaging in one of our favorite activities, our weekly shopping trip to Aldi. We had gotten our cereal, fruit, and other necessities and were heading to the checkout. But before we made it, my ADHD kicked in and I decided to go back and grab some other — unnecessary — items, namely more cereal. When I returned to my wife, I noticed she was conversing with an older, white woman. When she saw me, the woman responded in a surprised yet excited manner, “This must be him!” In retrospect, I think she was scouting us from the moment we entered through the sliding doors. As we chatted, we discovered that the lady, stereotypical of many older women, was quite inquisitive. She thought our olive oil was wine, and she was overbearingly sociable. After seemingly meaningless banter, our conversation ended by her saying that she was “very glad that we were in Huntington,” and like many “good” Christians, she invited us to visit her church.

Alyssa and I pushed our cart up to the checkout lane, bagged our items, and headed to the car. Then my wife filled me in on chapter one of the story.

While Alyssa was walking through the frozen food section, she almost bumped into something. She turned around and noticed this something was an older lady. The cordial “excuse me” came out from both my wife and the elderly woman. My wife assumed that the incident was over; both had gone through the social routine of apology and now it was time to move on with life. However, the woman, in her curiosity, had other thoughts.

Before Alyssa could scoot away and find me, the woman asked, “Oh, are you from the college?” It is a logical assumption: 1) we are young and many of those under 25 who live in Huntington are students at Huntington University, 2) when in non-business clothes, we (I especially) dress more “urban,” and 3) we are ethnic minorities, and many of the ethnic minorities that live in Huntington are affiliated with the college — or work at a restaurant.

Post-assumption, Alyssa informed the woman that she was not from the college and that I actually worked at the university. Unaffected by my wife’s attempts to escape, the woman asked where we lived – assuming that we didn’t actually live in Huntington. Alyssa told her that we just moved from Fort Wayne and that we previously lived in Champaign, Illinois. At that moment, the great awkwardness began. In an effort to connect with the anomaly of an Asian American in Huntington, the lady trotted down the road of “trying too hard.”

“I lived in Chicago!”

My wife politely responded, “Oh, I am from the suburbs of Chicago.”

The lady, in all genuineness . . . and cluelessness, said, “What, Chinatown?”

Alyssa’s face immediately expressed the words she could not — or at least should not — articulate, “Are ya serious?” The lady must have noticed my wife’s chagrin because she quickly recanted her statement, “That was a stupid and dumb thing to say . . . but you are Chinese, right?”

My wife, attempting to maintain her patience, responded, “Kinda, I’m Taiwanese.”

At this point, I, the unsuspecting husband, came up with my box of Aldi-brand Honey Bunches of Oats.

The complexity in this situation comes from the lady’s honest naiveté. She had probably never interacted with an Asian American in Huntington; she was probably nervous and somewhat dumbfounded; she was probably hopeful about the prospect of diversity, yet unsure of how to embrace it.

The blessing of this situation, odd as that may sound, is that my wife was given the opportunity to offer grace. When dealing with racial issues — reconciliation as a whole — grace must remain preeminent. This doesn’t mean that words do not hurt, people aren’t insensitive, or that people aren’t bitter. It does mean that as Christians we do not have the liberty of staying mad at someone. Grace is sometimes difficult. Uttering something racially offensive — in either ignorance or brazenness — not only conjures personal incidents of racism, but uproots the experiences of others, of family, and of ancestors. This is a deep litany of pain. It is much easier to choose the ways of anger or apathy rather than the way of grace.

The words that this woman spoke were wrong, they were insensate, but my wife had the opportunity to show her love just the same. If Alyssa had snapped back and said, “No, I am not from Chinatown, you racist idiot?” her frustration would have negatively influenced this white woman’s tolerance for diversity and understanding of others unlike her. My wife’s face said enough to suggest that the comment was not cool.

Don’t get it twisted, though; my wife was upset with the words spoken and she was angry that they were spoken. One is justified for having those emotions as the response of the sin and/or its ramifications. Grace does not preclude us from experiencing frustration and anger, but rather redirects those emotions to a productive, restorative response.

Ultimately, this situation was neither about my wife nor this woman, it was about reconciliation. A graceful response both freed my wife of bitterness and, hopefully, influenced that well-meaning woman towards a greater understanding of racial diversity and, more important, reconciliation.