Lin-oleum

This is a stupid title, but it's deliberate.

About a week ago I tweeted "I wish people could get over Lin's heritage and just enjoy him as a good basketball player." This was in the wake of the "two inches" and "chink in the armor" issues, which is what brought Jeremy Lin to my attention. I know there have been other things, but it was really these two that caught my eye. I haven't really followed the NBA for years, but sometimes I will wonder about something and look things up (like that time Greg Oden got me wondering about Sam Bowie's draft year).

Anyway, a good player, coming apparently out of nowhere and revitalizing a team, is a good story, and so I am totally down with Lin-mania and Lin-sanity, and I would only have found out about them by accident if not for the other things.

For Jason Whitlock himself, without knowing anything else about him, I suspect that he is on the mean-spirited side, and doesn't understand that nasty and vulgar don't automatically equal funny. Actually, a lot of people get confused over that.

With ESPN, though, maybe it was just a lapse in judgment. Possibly the lapse was related to someone irritated with the hype who was glad to see a loss, or something like that, but probably not with an intention to offend. That's my guess, but that this compulsive need to somehow work in the reminder that "Hey! He's Asian!" is where it went wrong, and that's where my tweet came from.

I have sort of changed my mind after reading the following:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7601157/the-headline-tweet-unfair-significance-jeremy-lin

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/21/2653567/lin-sanity-offers-lessons-for.html

Actually, it's kind of a demonstration of racial insensitivity. I am thinking of white people focusing on color, and wishing they wouldn't. It never even occurred to me that on the other side of the color line, Lin could be extra-inspirational.

That's normal. I'm in the racial majority--less so now in terms of sheer numbers now, but certainly still in power. I can remember precisely two times when I felt judged on race. My friends of color don't have it so good, and yes, the Asian-Americans do face less overt prejudice in many situations, but they do still get it, and often with less remedies in place. And even though I have heard them tell me about it, and I have seen other people demonstrate it, it still does not automatically come to mind for me, because I'm not the one living it. It's an oversight with no malice, that's just too easy to do.

Keeping that in mind, I could just look at it as okay, the focus on race can be reasonable, but the problem is that some people are being stupid about it. Ah stupidity, my old nemesis--I could be very comfortable with that as a scapegoat. It doesn't feel like enough though.

I think the reason for this is that because of all the stupid and ugly things in the world, there is something especially nasty about racism. It hurts my heart on an emotional level. It's hard for me to speak rationally about it because it hits me in such an emotional place. On an intellectual level I know racism is often used by the greedy and powerful to manipulate the ignorant against their own best interests (as well as the best interests of humanity), and that frustrates me to no end.

Becoming smarter people would help. Becoming kinder people would help. If you take away ignorance and spite, there shouldn't really be much left of racism, right? But getting people to change is hard, and probably anyone who reads this and agrees with it is not really a big part of the problem anyway. But stopping and thinking about things is helpful, right?

Not every racial story is inspiring. Clarence Thomas is a black man in a prestigious position, and I do not find it one bit inspiring. However, Lin's story is, and I'm glad that he did not let consistently being underrated stop him from pursuing his dream, and I'm glad that it paid off. If it can inspire other people to believe in themselves and keep going, great. If it inspires one blockhead to re-evaluate his understanding of who can be good at what, even better. I'm not sure why we didn't get over that with Yao Ming, but okay. Maybe there's a really good reason and I just wasn't paying attention.