Note: Lin was at Harvard, so most of his college games were against other conference opponents in the Ivy League, though the article also mentions examples from non-conference games at Georgetown and Vermont as well as conference opponents Cornell and Yale.
Is it surprising that there were more racists in the Ivy League than the NBA?
That isn’t much of an insult.
Yes, it is an insult just like the n word and the w word. It is unacceptable.
When one bully who was a 5th/6th grader attempted to use that epithet on top of physically assaulting me while I was a 2nd grader at my Catholic elementary school in my old former working-class NYC neighborhood of the '80s, those were fighting words.
Fighting words which prompted me to literally start stoning him.
When he cried to his parents and they came to complain to our Catholic School principal, she literally read them and their son the riot act citing the fact he was not only much bigger/stronger/older than me, he also had a long patterned history of bullying minority students…especially those of Asian descent and instigating fights which the parents ignored despite her numerous letters and phone calls to try dealing with those incidents.
She finished by saying my stoning him served him right for assaulting me without provocation and using that racist epithet and if they disagreed, they were welcome to enroll their child in the local public school. That basically shut them up, especially considering the local public school was known for being populated by much stronger and more violent rowdy kids which he wouldn’t be able to cope.
I do not doubt nor dismiss Lin’s experiences. I recall attending a high school basketball game in a fairly comfortable area, where the visiting team (from an even more affluent town) had a starting guard of Asian ancestry. The cat calls from the crowd were deplorable. At one point I turned to particularly loud mouth fan near me and said “can the kid play? Apparently he can, so why don’t you give him some respect.?”
Racists in the Ivy League? I’m SHOCKED!!!
The only people who go to games are the band, athletes, and alumni athletes. The fact of the matter is that white male athletes from less advantaged backgrounds stick out at the Ivies. They were studly at their high schools and they might even have been recruited by D1 schools where they would have been super special. They expect to be BMOC on campus and “get all the girls.” But, they are a lot less wealthy than the rowers and fencers or the guys in the top frat. They are even far less likely than their teammates of color to have gone to private schools and be acculturated to an intense intellectual environment. Many on campus assumes they got in scraping the bottom of the Ivy Academic Index or just plain dumb. All of it makes them a little resentful and more inclined to exaggerate their hyper-masculine, “rednecky” performance.
The comments were of course despicable and unacceptable. But did they reflect actual racism, in the heart of the offender? Or trying to get into the head of an immature player who has “rabbit ears” and might let it affect his game? Probably the same claim that the Phillies manager in “42” would have made. (Not a noble example, since it was pretty clear that that the manager wasn’t kidding).
And I guess it worked. From the article:
“I don’t know … that game, I ended up playing terrible and getting a couple of charges and doing real out-of-character stuff.”
Of course, even if this was the sole intent it was inexcusable.
There is actual racism, of all types, everywhere. I heard anti-Semitic comments from some one particular moron when I attended.
The issue that person had is the same that those who had actual negative feelings towards Asians would have had:
If those were their feelings,evidently they chose the wrong school to attend college. One where over 2,200 undergraduates/16% of student body at the time identified as Asian.
I’m a little surprised that an Asian American in this current day and age would be actually very offended by the comment though, that is new information to me. There are equally offensive and antiquated slurs referring to my own ethnicity. If someone called me one of those names I don’t think I would be offended. I would think that the guy was an idiot, think to myself “OMG is that guy for real?” and that he just insulted himself by using that term, not me. Certainly the “n” word is different, but I didn’t know others still cared so much about their respective antiquated, hardly-ever-heard-today, “handles”.
A slur is antiquated when it isn’t used and has stopped having impact on its target. I might laugh at being called a trollop, but be offended by sl.t. Clearly Ch…k is. still used and offensive.
Slurs hold a history of violence. It isn’t the consonants that hurt; it is the lynching, rapes, genocides implied.
If someone shouts racist things, I am going to believe he is a racist. Why should I give him the benefit of the doubt?
“A slur is antiquated when it isn’t used …”
I think that’s part of it, they are basically never used in this day and age. At least I never hear anybody using them.
I consider them largely artifacts of bygone eras. Not the sentiments, but those actual terms.
You need to get out more.
@monydad If you are using racist slurs you are racist. It doesn’t matter whether you are very consciously using it to get into the head of an opponent.
Re#7, “The only people who go to games are the band, athletes, and alumni athletes”
I don’t know for sure- I never attended a basketball game there myself- but based on some football games I attended there were probably some die-hard fraternity/sorority types who also attended. And friends of the team members.
But during the particular period Lin attended college- and basically only that period- the Cornell basketball team was actually really good. They went to the Sweet 16 one year. During that time, IIRC basketball attendance was rather high, and had a lot of student spectator involvement.
He didn’t say where the slur came from (ie stands, or players).
re#10, :"If someone shouts racist things, I am going to believe he is a racist. Why should I give him the benefit of the doubt? "
I wouldn’t necessarily give benefit of doubt, but to me it does raise some suspicion. Because it was in the context of a basketball game, not “real life”.
In basketball there is a long tradition of “trash talk”, where people will say basically whatever they can think of to get someone off their game. Someone might, for example, comment on the social life of a player’s mother. This does not necessarily reflect any real knowledge, or ill-feeling, towards that player’s mother. Just throwing out whatever they can think of in case something sticks.
By contrast, the example in #4 raises no such suspicion.
We should limit our insults to non-racially specific pejoratives. By that logic it’s perfectly OK to call Mr Lin a “mangy cur”. I think it has all become too PC.
If not using or wanting to hear racial slurs is considered too PC, then consider me too PC.
Of course moneydad doesn’t understand. He’s most probably not Asian American.
There’s a gulf of difference between what passes for trash talk and the use of racial slurs.
As someone who grew up in a former working-class NYC neighborhood in the '80’s where macho trash talking was commonplace, racial slurs were out of bounds. If uttered even in the context of “trash talk” there will be sudden silence followed shortly by a fight.
And everyone in the neighborhood would regard the utterer of the racial slur as the instigator of the fight in the same way as someone who threw the first punch/kick. Including the local cops.