Re #18: no, I DO understand.
I just didn’t know it, before this thread.
Because I wouldn’t feel the same way, about the slurs I would possibly hear about what I am.
I only heard such uttered, about me, once in my life. When I was about ten. I was upset then, but now I would think it was comic. I think.
And I can’t recall ever actually hearing anybody uttering what was said to Lin.
I can assure you that epithet is still commonly used against those of Asian descent down to the present.
And I was relatively sheltered in this respect compared with my older cousins or Asian-Americans attending other high schools because my public magnet HS was already ~50% Asian-American when I started. One non-Asian-American HS buddy joked that anyone dumb enough to use that epithet at our public magnet would literally face a beatdown by at least half the school’s population…and possibly more as their non-Asian-American friends are more than likely to join in.
While attending college in a rural midwestern White majority town, had a few encounters with ne’er do well locals driving by yelling those slurs at me and other students of Asian descent.
Heck, one almost got out of his car to try start a fight with me after I repaid his slur with a one fingered salute. He thought better of it the moment he noticed a police car coming up 3 blocks behind him.
Did Lin specify the race of the Cornell people that slurred him?
How could that possibly matter?
Asians don’t call each other that name.