UCLA student's rant says more about us than her

"Hey you guys...we did it! High fives," a friend recently wrote on his Facebook page.

By "it," he presumably meant forcing Alexandra Wallace to leave school. The UCLA student last week told the Daily Bruin she's leaving campus because of a YouTube video she posted ranting against Asian students in the library.

"I made a mistake." Wallace wrote. "My mistake, however, has lead to the harassment of my family, the publishing of my personal information, death threats, and being ostracized from an entire community. Accordingly, for personal safety reasons, I have chosen to no longer attend classes at UCLA."

I do not share my friend's happiness. In fact, I'm downright sad. What exactly did "we" accomplish? Harassing an immature college student so she quits school because of some dumb YouTube video?

Yay us.

To be clear, Wallace's video, in which she uses mock Asian accents to complain about Asian students speaking on their cell phones in the library, was stupid, ignorant, and, yes, racist. Wallace deserves a lot of the criticism and ridicule heaped her way.

But death threats? Insults? Publishing her personal information? Is that the best we have to offer?

What possessed Wallace to post such an inflammatory video is anyone's guess. But I do know this: she's certainly not the first person nor the only person to post racist crap on the Internet, Tweet something stupid, or rant on talk radio.

Yet we focus our ire on an inconsequential teenager.

With her blond hair, Valley-girl intonation, and sizable cleavage, Wallace presents an easy target. I suspect it's easier to attack her than, say,voting in a mid-term election. For all of the self righteous critics spewing hate and venom at Wallace, I certainly hope you're doing something meaningful to combat racism and improve society.

So Wallace quits school. Now what? Although Wallace apologizes for the video, she makes clear she left UCLA because of harassment, not because of any real epiphany about racism and tolerance.

Frankly, Wallace took the easy way out. If she really felt any contrition, she would stick it out and work to regain the respect of her peers and community. Wallace, after all, was a political science major.

In the end, is Alexandra Wallace a better person from this? Are "we?"

Can Thia Megia erase the memory of William Hung?

I'm not yet ready to place Thia Megia in the ranks of Gary Locke, Connie Chung, Michael Chang and other trailblazing Asian Americans.
But the 16-year-old's accession last week to American Idol finalist is quite impressive, a victory that puts her within striking distance of instant pop culture relevance.
Say what you want about American Idol's fading popularity but should Megia ultimately triumph, she could be the first recognizable Asian American pop music star...well, at least for her first album. (Sorry folks, Norah Jones doesn't count- hardly anyone knows she's part Asian. Her music is also more adult contemporary than pop.)
But more importantly, Megia can finally give American Idol audiences an Asian American to think about other than William Hung.
With his thick accent, sexless demeanor, and off key warbling, Hung has done more damage to Asian American heritage than the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese interment camps combined.
Not just because he sucks, but because Hung symbolizes every negative stereotype about Asian men. Worse yet, Hung has openly exploited his infamy, the modern day star of yellow face minstrel shows. I'm still not sure whether Hung knows he's the butt of jokes or if he even cares.
That either makes him the world's greatest idiot or the world's shrewdest capitalist.
Megia, on the other hand, is the complete anti-Hung. The former NBC America's Got Talent contestant has plenty of that. Her semi-final rendition of "Out Here On My Own" was technically superb.
Megia's youth also serves her well. From past champ Jordin Sparks to former runner-up David Archuleta, American Idol fans have embraced teenagers with fresh, pretty faces who sing beyond their years.
Will Megia actually win? Judging from American Idol's recent history, I'd say no. Since Sparks' triumph in Season 7, the American public have chosen three relatively dull white guys. (Can anyone really tell the difference between Kris Allen and Lee DeWyze?)
But having made the Top 10, Megia has secured a spot in the American Idol road tour and probably a recording contract of some kind. Unfortunately, unless Megia wins or finishes second, we'll probably never fully wipe clean the nightmare that's William Hung.

We DO all look alike

Way to represent!

Take a good look at the world's most typical face, at least according to National Geographic. The image is actually a composite of 7,000 photographs of a 28-year-old Chinese man of Han descent.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. China, after all, is home to 1.4 billion people (the majority belong to the Han ethnic group), which represents about 20 percent of the world's population. Of the world's 7 billion people, there are 9 million 28-year-old Han Chinese men.

That face will change in about 30 years. With an estimated population of 1.5 billion, India's population will surprise China by 2040.

A "Tiger" awakens in writer/journalist Cheryl Tan

Most mid-career adults facing a professional and personal crisis would see a therapist or perhaps buy a motorcycle.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan wrote a book about food and family. The former newspaper reporter’s memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, has earned excellent reviews and is rapidly climbing the charts on Amazon.com.

Kirkus Reviews called “Tiger a recipe in itself—a dash of conjuring the ancient stories of one's past, a sprinkling of culinary narrative. The result is a literary treat filled with Singaporean tradition, including the surprisingly significant role food plays in the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts and the Moon Festival, among others.”

Born in Singapore but a long time resident of the United States, Tan unspools the thread of her life through the most universal of human experiences: cooking and eating.

You wrote Tiger after your parents got divorced and the Wall Street Journal cut your job. How did those events influence your desire to write the book?

When the earth moves under your feet all of a sudden, it does make you take stock of your life and your state of happiness. Looking back, though, I think I've always had this book in the back of my head. It took many years of being away from Singapore, from home, from my family to miss it all (and the food) to the extent that it nudged me to take a year off to travel back to discover the recipes, the dishes and the important people of my childhood.

Tiger seems like an attempt to reconnect with your roots in Singapore. Did you feel you had become "too American?"

In many ways, I was very westernized as a child -- I grew up not knowing how to speak Teochew, the Chinese dialect that my family speaks, and not really knowing a lot about my heritage. Like many Singaporeans of my generation, I was raised on McDonald's as well as Singaporean dishes like chicken rice and chili crab. It wasn't until I was actually in America for many years that I felt a yearning for a lot of the foods I grew up loving and taking for granted. It was lovely to have a year to reconnect with it all.

You draw a strong relationship between food and family. But does that relationship necessarily apply to modern American society, where people eat on the go and the idea of a traditional sit down family meal seems almost quaint?

Even though many American families don't often have the time to have sit-down family dinners, I think many have fond memories of dishes that they grew up loving -- when I first wrote about going home to learn how to make my late grandmother's pineapple tarts for the Wall Street Journal, I got emails from readers -- many of them not Asian -- who all had a dish that the story reminded them of. One reader talked about her grandmother's sugar cookies; another mentioned her father's sloppy joes -- all of them expressed a deep regret that they had not taken the time to learn how to make them. I think that's something universal -- so many of us are so busy these days we don't often have the time or think to make the time to sit down with our family members to learn how to make these dishes that have defined us. It's a pity.

Reviewers have compared your book to everything from Women Warrior and Julia and Julia to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. How do you feel about that?

It has been very humbling for me -- I read the Woman Warrior as a teenager and was in complete awe of Maxine Hong Kingston. To be compared to her in any small way -- that really blew me away. I couldn't believe it. And I adored Julie Powell's book when I read it -- it's certainly been a wild ride.

Any thoughts of turning Tiger into a movie or a play? If so, who would play you and your family?

I haven't thought that far ahead! I do love Maggie Q in Nikita-- I understand that she spent some time in Asia and knows Singapore. I hope she reads the book and likes it!

Anchors Away? 14th Amendment Under Attack

Among my most prized possessions in my rather cluttered apartment is a fraying, green document that declares that Thomas Ding-Moon Lee was born on December 12, 1977 in Boston, Massachusetts, 10:41 a.m. to be precise.

I probably value my birth certificate more than the average Joe because it proves that I am, indeed, a citizen of the United States of the America. Since I’m second generation Chinese, born to immigrant parents, I can’t really take anything for granted.

Am I little paranoid? Maybe. But given the ugly debate over immigration in recent years, better safe than sorry.

The latest example is the effort by some lawmakers in Congress and state capitals to deny citizenship to so-called “anchor babies,” the children born to undocumented workers in America.

You would think that we settled this a long time ago. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

But these days, nothing seems set in stone, even Constitutional clauses and established case law.

Including this one: in 1894, American-born Wong Kim Ark sailed to China for a temporary visit. When Ark attempted to return to San Francisco, immigration authorities denied him entry, arguing Ark was not a citizen because his parents were subjects to the Emperor of China.

Officials were enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed 12 years earlier, that attempted to limit the number of Chinese immigrants in the country.

In a 6-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ark, reaffirming the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Of course, history has proven that citizenship on paper doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a citizen in practice. It took more than a hundred years for blacks to realistically exercise the rights granted to them by the Fourteenth Amendment.

After the Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the federal government herded Japanese people, citizen or not, to internment camps in the southwest.

But history and law aside, it’s today’s venomous climate that makes me queasy. Targeting adult undocumented workers is one thing. But to target new born babies, who really didn’t have any say in the matter, just seems cruel and mean spirited.

And if we undermine the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, where does it end? What could prevent lawmakers from retroactively denying citizenship to people whose crime was being born in the United States to immigrants, documented or not?

Somewhere, Wong Kim Ark is spinning in his grave.

A Truly Global Billy Elliott

As the house lights fell on the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis Friday night, a booming voice announced that Lex Ishimoto would play the lead role of Billy Elliot.

Lex Ishimoto?

Moments later, a skinny boy with black hair and diamond shaped eyes wandered onto the stage sporting a thick brogue and Baryshnikov-like dancing skills.

Based on the movie, Billy Elliot: The Musical is the story of an 11-year-old boy in working class Northern England who longs to be a ballet dancer, much to the consternation of his miner father and older brother.

The producers of this national tour have employed the services of five young actors to rotate the role of Billy. Given the physical demands of the role, that’s not entirely surprising. What‘s surprising are the names of the five actors: Giuseppe Bausilio, Michael Dameski, Kylend Hetherington, Daniel Russell, and Ishimoto.

Ishimoto, a Japanese American from California, would seem like an odd choice to play Billy. It also begs the question: shouldn’t have the producers cast a white actor to play the very white role of Billy Elliot?

Last year, the board of Mu Performing Arts objected to the Minneapolis Children’s Theater casting a white actor in a key Asian role in its production of Mulan.

So why it is okay to cast an Asian American kid as a white English boy and not a white actor as a Chinese general?

It’s a difficult question and in some ways cuts to the very heart of affirmative action in the United States.

Opponents of affirmative action say the policy is little more than reverse discrimination. In a truly race-blind society, merit, not skin color, should be the ultimate factor. After all, didn’t Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have a dream that one day society will judge people not on the color of their skin but the content of their character?

The problem with that argument is that day has not yet arrived…and may never will. Dr. King was speaking of a dream, not of an inevitable outcome. We may never realize that dream but we certainly must try.

In theater, the question is not just about culturally correct casting. It’s about opportunity. The vast majority of actors working in Broadway and national theater are white as is the material they are playing.

While it’s all good to say that a worthy actor can play any role, the sad reality is that you’re more likely to see a white actor portray Hamlet on Broadway or the Guthrie than an Asian American.

Yes, there are more Asian American actors, directors, and playwrights working in theater today. But it’s unlikely their work will boast the commercial appeal of The Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables.

(Quick…name a smash hit Asian American-penned musical. That’s what I thought.)

So when a role like the general in Mulan or Song Liling in M. Butterfly comes along, you better believe deserving Asian Americans will want those opportunities.

Does casting Ishimoto as Billy Elliot detract from the role? Maybe it’s a little distracting in the beginning. But as the musical progresses and you see the breadth of Ishimoto’s amazing talent, you start to care less and less.

Did the producers need to cast Ishimoto? No. But I’m glad they did.

In fact, Ishimoto’s background enhances the material. Where else in the world can a skinny Japanese American kid from California wow audiences on a national tour of a smash hit British musical?

Billy Elliot is a show about a kid that seizes a wonderful opportunity despite his background through hard work and talent. It could easily be the story of Lex Ishimoto.

But Billy’s story is the exception, not the rule. While Billy wins an invitation to the Royal Ballet school in London, the rest of his hardscrabble town must cope with broken lives and decaying mines.

“We can’t all be dancers Billy,” Tony tells his younger brother.

I guess that’s why Billy Elliot is a work of fiction, a dream of sorts.

But what a dream.

photo via broadwayworld.com
entry by Thomas Lee

If at first you don't succeed. . . ?

Margaret Cho couldn’t hack it as an ABC sitcom star. Now she’ll try shaking her booty.

Sixteen years after the ill fated All American Girl went off the air, Cho will return to the same network that dumped her, this time as a contestant for Dancing with the Stars.

Probably not the career arc the comedian pictured when she became the first Asian American to headline a prime time sitcom in 1994. When ABC canceled the show after one season, Cho accused the network of forcing her to lose weight and hiring a consultant to make her look “more Asian.”

(Playwright David Henry Hwang was reportedly hired to save the show. At a Mu panel discussion on yellow face casting, Hwang denied it, though I couldn’t tell if he was joking.)

If Cho is still bitter about the experience, she’s not letting on.

“Show business has changed a lot too, so it's a different kind of thing," Cho told Access Hollywood. "So, I'm really excited [about Dancing with the Stars]. I think it's great, I love the show, it's a totally different thing though. I was a really young person then and now, you know, now I'm more experienced and now I'm doing something different -- I'm dancing, which is new also for me.”

I’m not sure what Cho meant by show business changing. Has it? Sixteen years removed from All American Girl, the number of Asian American-headlined shows, drama or comedy, remains zero, with the exception of Maggie Q in Nikita on the CW. (It would be nice for a change to see a lead Asian actor not kick the crap of people.)

Meanwhile, we’ve had the endless Tyler Perry shows on TBS, a hodge podge of gay people on NBC’s Will & Grace, and George Lopez on. . . you guessed it, ABC.

On the bright side, Cho’s casting in Dancing with the Stars proves that network executives are at least comfortable with Asian Americans in ensemble or supporting roles. Witness Glee, Lost, and Hawaii Five-O.

Now if only an Asian American can make the first cut in The Bachelorette.

Frankly, I was hoping Cho would still be a little bitter about All American Girl. She certainly mined her miserable experience for comedic gold in subsequent clubs around the country. Somehow, there’s something sad about Cho making nice with ABC. I suppose bygones should be bygones but it feels like she’s selling out, at least a teeny bit.

Asian Americans can’t headline shows, but at least they’re finally good enough to wear shiny costumes and learn the tango.

Yay us.

by Thomas Lee
photo via Asian Pacific Arts at UCLA Asia Institute

What makes a film "Asian"?

A few weeks ago, the Minnesota Film Arts invited me to advise the group on their plans to launch the first ever Minneapolis-St. Paul Asian International Film Festival in November. Or was it the Minneapolis-St. Paul Asian American Film Festival? I’m still confused.

MFA received a grant to develop a festival that would serve underserved communities. But “underserved communities” is a hazy definition, as is what constitutes the Asian (American) community. Some people might think I’m splitting hairs or even indulging in excessive political correctness. But to understand the difference is to understand the dilemma that has long flummoxed people of Asian descent in the United States.

I suspect organizers originally planned on devoting the festival to films created in China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam. There’s nothing wrong with that--Asia produces quality films as any other continent.

However, I’m not sure these films reflect the grant’s original purpose of serving underserved communities. The films might be high quality, but as a second generation American of Chinese descent, I don’t feel any special emotional affinity for films produced in China. I like a good flick like anyone else, but so do white, black, and Hispanic people.

Of course, films from Asia might resonate with more recent immigrant communities, like the Hmong or Laotians. I suspect, though, an entirely Asian film festival will attract people who normally enjoy foreign films with subtitles--mainly white people.

But what’s really missing in this country are films that reflect the Asian American experience-- the model minority stereotypes, the desexualization of Asian American men and the hypersexualization of Asian American women, the perpetual perception that people of Asian descent are foreigners even though many, like myself, have lived their entire lives in the United States and consider themselves primarily Americans.

I couldn’t think of any less served underserved community.

Two immediate films come to mind and they couldn’t be more different. In 2003, Better Luck Tomorrow, directed by Justin Lin and produced by MTV Films, nearly won the Grand Jury Prize at the famed Sundance Film Festival. The film centers around a group of high achieving Asian American high school students, who, perhaps bored with their high GPAs, AP classes, and Ivy League college applications, embark on a sociopathic crime spree that ultimately results in murder.

What’s striking about this film is that main characters both embody and defy the model minority stereotypes. No, not just defy, they literally and figuratively stab, beat, and shoot those stereotypes into smithereens. Pretty dark stuff.

I recall reading a story about the film’s screening when an audience member criticized Lin for not portraying Asian Americans in a more “positive” light. To which famed Chicago Sun Times movie critic Roger Ebert retorted something like: “I doubt you would have suggested the same thing to Francis Ford Coppola for his portrayal Italian Americans in The Godfather.”

Double standards are a real bitch.

The next film true to the Asian American experience is (don’t laugh…or then again, please do) is the stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. No, I’m not saying Asian Americans particularly like weed and mini burgers (although I’m sure many do). But beyond the silly premise and the rock out cameo by Neil Patrick Harris, Harold and Kumar, like the kids from Better Luck Tomorrow, try to overcome the stereotypes that have made them an ideal target for every snarky remark about Asian Americans.

Kumar, an Indian American, does his best to defy his dad who desperately wants his son to become (you guessed it) a doctor. Kumar spends most of his time thinking of creative ways to sabotage his med school interviews. With his parted hair and always available lap top, Harold, a Korean American, is a dutiful, meek cubicle drone who does the work of his lazy, white colleagues. Oh sure, Harold is pissed off--he just can’t summon the courage to do anything about it. He’s similarly powerless in his affection for the hot girl who lives in his apartment building, for Harold possesses the sexual prowess of an pecan nut.

Unlike the kids in Better Luck Tomorrow, Harold and Kumar don’t murder anyone. But they do manage to ride a cheetah, steal a truck, hang glide off a cliff, win the girl, and yes, go to White Castle.

Now that’s what I call a happy ending!

by Thomas Lee

Hope. . . even in North Korea

For Laura Ling, a 12 year sentence to hard labor in North Korea last year was retroactively wiped away by a phone call in 1992.

Then President Bill Clinton placed a call to Kim Jong-Il, offering condolences on behalf of the United States to the North Korean leader over the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, whose army fought American forces to a stalemate in the Korean War over four decades ago.

That an American president would personally phone a Cold War foe and iron fisted dictator is surprising enough. That Clinton was the first international leader to do so, even before China, North Korea’s strongest ally, is downright unbelievable.

Good thing for Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee that Kim Jong-Il never forgot the gesture. When “Dear Leader” agreed to pardon Ling and Lee last year over charges they trespassed into North Korean and conspired to topple the government, Kim Jong-Il had only one request: that he personally meet Clinton when authorities released the two women.

Ling, sister of National Geographic host Lisa Ling, and Lee recounted these stories in Los Angeles last week during the annual national convention of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Ling’s keynote address was striking not just for its deft prose and heartfelt sincerity but that the speech lacked any self pity or animosity one would expect from a journalist beaten, imprisoned and ruthlessly interrogated by an oppressive regime.

Last year, Ling and Lee traveled to China to work on a story about North Korean women defectors for Current TV, a cable channel founded by former vice president Al Gore. Led by a guide, the two journalists briefly crossed the border into North Korea before turning back.

It was too late. North Korean border guards chased the women into China and literally dragged the two kicking and screaming into the Hermit Kingdom. A North Korean judge deliberated for five minutes before sentencing the journalists to 12 years of hard labor, two years for trespassing and a decade for plotting to overthrow the government.

Despite rumors that the guide had lured the Americans into a trap, Ling refused to blame anyone but herself.

“It was my decision alone” to cross into North Korea, she said.

Ling also said she preferred to focus on the positive parts of experience.

Uh…what positive parts?

After the court sentenced her, Ling said she curled into a little ball in the corner of her room and sobbed uncontrollably. Suddenly, one of her female guards, who spewed propaganda at Ling when she first arrived at the prison, did the unexpected: the guard consoled Ling.

“Don’t worry Laura,” the guard said. “Never lose hope.”

Ling’s story should remind us that even the most seemingly evil people, whether the guard or dictator, can sometimes show a little humanity- if the occasion calls for it.

Not often. But sometimes.

by Thomas Lee

What's in a name? Apparently, way too much.

“Do you know what’s the most popular last name in the world?” my dad would ask me for the umpteenth time as a child. “Lee!”

I was never sure if that was actually true. But it sounds plausible. We all know Lee is popular in Asian culture. There’s also plenty of famous black (Spike) and white (Robert E., Tommy, Stan) people with the surname.

But judging by recent events, you would have thought Lee was as common as Schwarzenegger.
I was a reporter at the Star Tribune for nearly six years before leaving last December for a new job. In my place, the newspaper hired Wendy Lee, a cheerful Californian gal who happens to be a good friend of mine.

Aside from our last names, Chinese descent and mutual affection for karaoke, we are completely different people. She’s short. I’m tallish. She’s West Coast. I’m East. She’s not afraid to drive a car. Me? Well, that’s another story.

Yet people can’t help but fixate on our last name. Are we married? Are we related? Are we in fact the same person as we sometimes suspected of Michael and Janet Jackson?

The answer to all of these questions is a resounding no although I figure we’re related in the same way everyone is related to Australopithecus africanus.

The day the paper announced her hire must have been a slow news day.

“No one had anything better to say,” a friend told me. “So we just focused on your last name.”
Really? What’s so unusual about it? If Wendy Smith just replaced Thomas Smith at the Star Tribune, would anybody had noticed the similarity?

It didn’t help that a headline in a local news blog read: “Strib completes Lee for Lee swap.” I suddenly felt like a baseball card.

A few months ago, reporters gathered in a conference room for a tense staff meeting. After a few heated exchanges, the room grew quiet. My friend, never wanting to waste a perfectly good awkward moment, raised his hand.

“I want to ask a question that I think everyone here wants to ask,” he deadpanned. “Is Tom Lee related to Wendy Lee?”

Aside from a few muffled giggles, no one really understood the joke, including the editor running the meeting.

“Um…I don’t think so,” the editor dutifully answered. “I do know that they know each other quite well.”

After a while, people grew bored with the last name thing. So they started to focus on our looks.
“You know, Wendy Lee is much cuter than you Tom,” I heard more than once.

Now, I completely agree that Wendy is much cuter than me. In fact, I would feel downright uncomfortable if people said I was much cuter than Wendy. (I guess I just don’t equate myself with “cute” in any sense of the word.)

But why would the question even come up? Do we always like to compare the attractiveness of present and previous employees? If the paper announced Wendy Smith is replacing Tom Smith, do people automatically think: I wonder if she’s cuter than him?

Perhaps I should change my last name to Schwarzenegger. That way, there would be no need to wonder whether Arnold or myself would win the title.

It’s pretty obvious, no?

by Thomas Lee

Jeremy Lin is no Yao Ming

Lin is an undrafted 6’3 point guard who recently graduated from Harvard University. Ming is a 7’6 Chinese national and former number one overall draft pick with the Houston Rockets.

Yet the American-born Lin will soon join Ming in the NBA, having just signed a three year contract with his hometown Golden State Warriors.

Asians in the NBA, or any North American professional sports league for the matter, are as common as balmy winters in Minnesota; you just never see one. The ones that do come along, like Ming and Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners, are already established foreign-born stars, vehicles for the NBA and Major League Baseball to market their brands to global audiences, including immigrant communities in the United States.

I doubt Lin will receive any huge endorsement offers anytime soon. But that doesn’t make his achievements any less compelling: an unknown Asian American kid from California who played his butt off at Harvard and earned a spot with the Warriors thanks to pure merit and hard work. In other words, the stereotypical Asian American experience.

If the NBA really wants to reach Asian communities in the United States, perhaps they should keep an eye on Lin, especially if he gets really good.

Will he become the Asian Jackie Robinson for basketball? Too soon to tell. But like Robinson, he’s already seen the ugly side of the race barrier.

In an interview with CNN this weekend, Lin said he heard racial taunts throughout his career at Harvard. The only real surprise, he said, was the abuse he took as a freshman when he didn’t even play that much.

Lin took it in stride. “I accept it as part of the game,” he said. “They’re just trying to get into your head.”

It’s sad that Lin has to accept it as part of the game. Everyone expects a little trash talking. But racial taunts? Whatever happened to “your mother wears combat boots”?

Black players endured the same thing before breaking into baseball and basketball. Today, black players are the majority in the NBA. One can only assume (or perhaps hope) that fans don’t scream “nigger” at games. If they did, which player are they trying to mess with?

Here’s hoping Lin can excel in the NBA not as a novelty or race pioneer but as American kid who got game.

by Thomas Lee