An Asian-American Breakthrough

Sports fans everywhere are caught up in the mania surrounding New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin. But Lin’s impact is most personal, and most satisfying, among a subset of Asian Americans: those who, like Lin, grew up with a true passion for basketball, but are often stereotyped on playgrounds, in pick-up gyms or in recreational leagues as guys who cannot really play the game. Now that one of their own, Lin, has made the NBA – he’s not only Asian-American, but a guard, and not a seven-footer like Yao Ming — these Asian-Americans hope that Lin can change views in a place where race or ethnicity has always affected behavior and mindset: the basketball court.

Asian-American hoopheads hope that Lin’s example will encourage more Asian-American kids to pursue their basketball dreams. “There’s nothing wrong with being engineers, doctors or lawyers,” comicbook artist Bernard Chang told Time Magazine. “I just think we should be represented in balance. Sports like basketball are a huge part of our culture. Success will help us stake our claim as Americans.” 

There have been, in recent years, many Asian American pioneers in the public eye who’ve defied the condescendingly complimentary “model minority” stereotype: actors like Lucy Liu, artists like Maya Lin, moguls like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. They are known, often admired. But Lin is something new: an Asian American whom millions of other Americans want to be.

“He’s like our Obama,” one Asian-American, who professionally works in the technology industry but plays recreational basketball on the weekends, told Time, referring to how Lin is beginning to break stereotypes about Asian-Americans. 

Their embrace of Lin has made millions of Asian Americans feel vicariously, thrillingly embraced. Not invisible. Not presumed foreign. Just part of the team, belonging in the game. It is felt like a breakout moment: for Lin, for Asian America and, thus, for all of America.

Identity in America is complicated but it is also simple: it is about whom you identify with and who identifies with you. Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career. Just as surely, though, it is leading many non-Asian non-athletes to expand their identities; to redefine, just by their rooting interest, “American.”

With Lin’s rise, there has been a swelling, collective feeling that Asians are no different from the other people they see on national TV, almost exclusively white and black. Jeremy Lin provides a source of potential within us, that we all house the talent and skill to be great, no matter our religious or ethnic background.

The New York Times' Michael Luo wrote about the inspiration Lin provides to young Asian-Americans, who have had a dearth of role models in major American sports. (Stars like Ichiro and Yao Ming are not Asian-American, but rather full Asian.) Consider this: Asian-Americans are now represented at every level of the NBA, from the court (Lin) to the sidelines (Eric Spoelstra, who is Filipino-American) and the front office (Rich Cho, the Bobcats assistant GM and former Blazers GM, who is Burmese-American). The NBA's world-class diversity continues

-Rayna Linowes