Race Against The Machine: Jeremy Lin And The NBA’s Savior Myth

Boston is an interesting case specifically because it’s about Irish and Italian Catholics, rather than simple whiteness.  The racial conflict there was as much about selling a story of class and potential to the poor, marginalized, stereotypically-demasculinized audience in Boston as it was about black vs. white.  It is about marginalized people pitted against each other, playing a zero-sum game, and the white, well-off protestant, male owners milking that for cash.

I think my favorite part of Lin’s story is how off-guard it caught the league, like they’d never imagined diversity as a selling tactic.  I’m reminded of NASCAR’s drive to get more female drives because they saw a jump in viewership when the first woman started driving.  Everyone enjoys watching sports as aspiration.

I actually see closer parallels between Lin and early Jordan mania.  It’s not clear yet that he’ll live up to his hype at anywhere close to the level Jordan did and he can easily flame out, but the image of being an intelligent, mature, together guy in a world of alleged rapists (Lin’s case) or domestic batterers (Jordan’s) draws fans and pisses off many other people.  Lin adds race to the mix, but this reaction is not unprecedented. 

Plus, it’s important to mention, and people seem to have short memories, that Blacks playing in the NBA in large numbers happened in the 70′s.  When Bill Bradley played, I don’t think white stars were uncommon, or perhaps the tide was just turning.  I mean, doesn’t anyone remember Bill Russell who was more or less a pioneer as a Black NBA star?  

One NOTEABLE difference about Lin’s entree into the NBA is that it probably isn’t the beginning of a shift of the game from being majority Black to majority Asian, whereas previously, the game did in fact shift from being majority White players to majority Black players.  Black players perhaps had the benefit of having leagues before sports were integrated.  We may have been shut out of mainstream professional sports, but people were still playing at that level, so as the barriers were reduced, there was already a large group of talented athletes who were ready to cross over (for example, research the history of the integration of college football).  

I’m not that old but I’m old enough to know that the history of the NBA has only recently become Black history.  

What I’m wondering though is if Lin’s success will have more Asians and Asian Americans pushing their kids to pursue athletic success, b/c while in the case of the NBA, height is something that matters and part of the reason why it’s a mostly Black and White story is that Yao Mings and Jeremy Lin’s aside, it is a  BIG man’s game and you are more likely to find the next star in a population that has a LOT of tall people.   Are some Asians tall?  Sure?  Are there as many tall Asian men as there are tall Black and White men.  I don’t think so.  I mean, you have a lot of Croatian players b/c they also are a population with a lot of big people, and it’s easier to find the combination of a tall guy who has skills.  

Whether people want to admit it or not, athletics can open doors even at a place like Harvard, and it definitely would make you stand out and help you gain admission.  So maybe the parents will catch on to that.  

Will Asian parents see Lin’s path as a viable one? Harvard and Yale and Princeton don’t give athletic scholarships but they do give generous financial aid and they DO recruit athletes who are talented but also are interested in getting a top education.  Harvard’s current basketball coach is a Duke alum and that was part of the reason he was chosen.  

Will violins and pianos be replaced by basketballs?  I don’t say this to promote stereotypes but while Asian American athletes might be benched too much, I also think far fewer of them have parents who have them out playing soccer, football, hockey, etc.  In order to find talent, you need significant numbers of people entering the talent pool.  

We’ve seen some high profile Asian American and Asian women in figure skating and golf, but how many Asian American men are training intently for high school and college sports careers?  We have some high profile Japanese baseball stars.  Any Japanese Americans in major league baseball?

 ”I think my favorite part of Lin’s story is how off-guard it caught the
league, like they’d never imagined diversity as a selling tactic.”

Actually the league was downright giddy when Yao Ming first came out because of the increased viewership and excitement he brought from fans back in China. The NBA has also been pushing to increase the sport’s scope throughout the world for quite some time now, including creating international clinics run by some of their most popular stars. So I don’t think it was the league that was caught off-guard but instead it was the fans and the media.

True, but I’d also argue that a) there are ways around it, which was the case of the Williams Sisters or Tiger Woods, whose parents taught them their normally expensive and all-white sports,  and also that the cost of some sports depends on location, so for example, hockey becomes a lot more common in colder parts of the U.S. and in Canada, where plenty of non-wealthy kids play (and get scholarships to prep schools to do it, and also get entry into Ivy League and other elite schools b/c of it), and b)the things that Asian-American kids currently are very represented in like piano and violin, are not cheap.  Expensive instruments, expensive lessons, and some travel if they compete.

So it does seem that it’s very much about how their parents chose to invest their resources, not that they cannot afford sports.  So I still wonder if Lin’s success will have parents pushing their kids into something beyond academics.  

However, hockey is  a good example of a sport where racism is alive and well and the harassment that the few black hockey players deal with both with from teammates, other players, and fans, is well-documented.  And soccer is a sport that has plenty of black players but they too get taunted when they play before fans in more racially heterogeneous countries. 

Like I said, we’ve seen this before but I think the main difference is that I don’t know if we’ll see more parent positioning their kids to play sports at an elite level.  There isn’t a pipeline.  

Yesterday’s ESPN headline about Jeremy Lin? “A Chink in the Armor.”

Fuck that.

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2012/2/18/2807696/espn-chink-in-the-armor-headline-jeremy-lin