Following Madison Square Garden’s basically unnoticed decision to paste Jeremy Lin’s face on a fortune cookie and ESPN’s very noticed decision to use the headline “Chink in the Armor” in reference to his team’s defeat, folks began to wonder what the right way to cover Lin is.
Apparently, whereas everyone is inherently familiar with the proper level of political correctness to use when it comes African-American, Latino and white players – covering Asians is something of a mystery to journalists.
Fortunately for us, the good folks at the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) sensed the media’s discomfort and decided to take the initiative. Below are some guidelines they suggest reporters and analysts should follow when dealing with Linsanity (via Yahoo):
THE FACTS
1. Jeremy Lin is Asian American, not Asian (more specifically, Taiwanese American). It's an important distinction and one that should be considered before any references to former NBA players such as Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi, who were Chinese. Lin's experiences were fundamentally different than people who immigrated to play in the NBA. Lin progressed through the ranks of American basketball from high school to college to the NBA, and to characterize him as a foreigner is both inaccurate and insulting.
2. Lin's path to Madison Square Garden: More than 300 division schools passed on him. Harvard University has had only three other graduates go on to the NBA, the most recent one being in the 1950s. No NBA team wanted Lin in the draft after he graduated from Harvard.
3. Journalists don't assume that African American players identify with NBA players who emigrated from Africa. The same principle applies with Asian Americans. It's fair to ask Lin whether he looked up to or took pride in the accomplishments of Asian players. He may have. It's unfair and poor journalism to assume he did.
4. Lin is not the first Asian American to play in the National Basketball Association. Raymond Townsend, who's of Filipino descent, was a first-round choice of the Golden State Warriors in the 1970s. Rex Walters, who is of Japanese descent, was a first-round draft pick by the New Jersey Nets out of the University of Kansas in 1993 and played seven seasons in the NBA; Walters is now the coach at University of San Francisco. Wat Misaka is believed to have been the first Asian American to play professional basketball in the United States. Misaka, who's of Japanese descent, appeared in three games for the New York Knicks in the 1947-48 season when the Knicks were part of the Basketball Association of America, which merged with the NBA after the 1948-49 season.
DANGER ZONES
"CHINK": Pejorative; do not use in a context involving an Asian person on someone who is Asian American. Extreme care is needed if using the well-trod phrase "chink in the armor"; be mindful that the context does not involve Asia, Asians or Asian Americans. (The appearance of this phrase with regard to Lin led AAJA MediaWatch to issue statement to ESPN, which subsequently disciplined its employees.)
DRIVING: This is part of the sport of basketball, but resist the temptation to refer to an "Asian who knows how to drive."
EYE SHAPE: This is irrelevant. Do not make such references if discussing Lin's vision.
FOOD: Is there a compelling reason to draw a connection between Lin and fortune cookies, takeout boxes or similar imagery? In the majority of news coverage, the answer will be no.
MARTIAL ARTS: You're writing about a basketball player. Don't conflate his skills with judo, karate, tae kwon do, etc. Do not refer to Lin as "Grasshopper" or similar names associated with martial-arts stereotypes.
"ME LOVE YOU LIN TIME": Avoid. This is a lazy pun on the athlete's name and alludes to the broken English of a Hollywood caricature from the 1980s.
"YELLOW MAMBA": This nickname that some have used for Lin plays off the "Black Mamba" nickname used by NBA star Kobe Bryant. It should be avoided. Asian immigrants in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries were subjected to discriminatory treatment resulting from a fear of a "Yellow Peril" that was touted in the media, which led to legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act.
As noted by the good folks over at Deadspin, most of these ideas probably never even crossed anyone’s minds. Sure, there have been a few throwaway fan signs that walk the fine line between insulting and stupid, but considering the fact that signs like “I want you Linside me" exist, can you really take fan signs seriously? Fan signs are fan signs; this was clearly targeted at people who cover sports. Or, you know, people who should already know better
While you have to admire the AAJA’s effort with this, all they really did was give a bunch of internet commenters new and innovative ways to make racist comments about Lin. This list certainly won't save anyone from writing another ill-advised headline, that's for sure. The “Chink in the Armor” ESPN thing was an error in judgment, obviously, but it’s one that will inevitably happen again somewhere. For every list of things you shouldn’t say, you can always find ten more things not on that list that are still offensive that someone will say.
Of course, all this brings us back to a point that we made a week and change ago when Floyd Mayweather Jr. "decided to bring race into the discussion" and note that Lin is overhyped by the media because he’s Asian. While we disagreed that Lin was only getting hype because he was Asian (his skills and New York zip code play huge roles), it’s not outrageous to admit that dealing with Lin requires taking his background into account. Once again: him being Asian matters in the grand scheme of why his story is so compelling, it matters in the way people view him as a player, and it matters in the way that that the media has to cover him.
It matters.
Photo Credit: Jet Life Beats.
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