Despite the fact that Madison Square Garden found itself in the hot seat last week for pasting Jeremy Lin’s face onto a fortune cookie graphic, the good folks at Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream still decided to throw caution to the wind in their attempt to profit off Lin’s success.
For a limited time, the Vermont-based ice cream institution we know as Ben & Jerry’s will be selling a new flavor in honor of New York Knicks point guard, Lin. According to The Boston Globe (via Deadspin), the flavor will be sold at Ben & Jerry’s Harvard shop in honor of the first Harvard University graduate in recent memory (ever?) to have success at the highest level of basketball.
What’s in it? Let’s take a look:
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Fortune cookie? Really?
And for those who don’t know what lychee is (we didn’t), the good folks at Deadspin broke it down:
Also, “Taste The Lin-Sanity” features lychee, which is a fruit native to Southeast Asia, which is not the part of Asia that Jeremy Lin comes from. (The part of Asia that Jeremy Lin comes from is Northern California.)
So there you go. As a result of some backlash to the fortune cookie part of the recipe, the powers that be at Ben & Jerry's instantly changed it to this:
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Here is the question: are any references to Lin and fortune cookies considered racist? (The AAJA thought so.)
(Kudos to Deadspin for the find)
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This is absurd. Not every attempt to associate an individual with their racial heritage is a racial slur. A big part of racism is the intent to abase or harm through humiliation. Where is the negative intent with fortune cookie bits in ice cream?