s**********n
发帖数: 1019 | 1 下面的很多评论也很有水平.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2012/02/06/
Jeremy Lin and the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
By Timothy Dalrymple, February 6, 2012 1:47 pm
Sometimes compliments are the worst insults.
In early 2010, back he was a Harvard phenom, I had the privilege of
interviewing NBA basketballer Jeremy Lin. We were still building this crazy
thing called Patheos, so I met Jeremy at his dorm and used a $150 HD camera
. I presented the interview in text form (see Part One and Part Two)
because Jeremy spoke in an immobile monotone. Even so, Question 1 of my
homemade interview has gotten over 36,000 views. Suffice it to say that
Jeremy Lin has a following.
He particularly has a following amongst Asian-Americans. And some Asian-
American young men, long stereotyped as timid and unathletic, nerdy or
effeminate or socially immature — have fought back tears (which may not
help with the stereotype, but is understandable under the circumstances) as
they watched Jeremy Lin score 25 points, 7 assists and 5 rebounds for the
New York Knicks. Here are the highlights, but the lowlights are the pseudo-
compliments from the commentators, whose astonishment at Jeremy’s success
speaks volumes:
I loved watching Jeremy’s aggression on the court and his enjoyment of the
game. I loved seeing his teammates’ celebration, since Jeremy has
obviously won their hearts with his courage and kindness. I did not love
the belittling comments. Now, I’m always reticent to cry “racism,” and I
won’t cry “racism” in this case. The commentators are not showing
hatred of a race. I won’t even call it bigotry — at least not bigotry
outright. If anything, they’re showing what President Bush famously called
“the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Their astonishment at the sight
of Jeremy Lin outperforming the other players, their consistent references
to how exhausted he must be, and how “magical” a night he’s having (
rather than a natural result of talent and hard work) suggests that they’ve
bought into the stereotype of the physically inferior Asian-American male.
I grew up in the Bay Area with a Korean adopted sister and best friends who
were Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino. I married an extraordinary
Chinese-American woman, and thus joined her family and community (amongst
whom I now live). Even though I’m Caucasian, I’ve been around Asian-
American communities long enough to see that Asian-American men and women
face different stereotypes and different challenges. Asian-American women
by and large have a positive, helpful image in American society. Although
some Asian-American women will complain about stereotypes of submissiveness
or nerdiness or asexuality, so many Asian-American women have become doctors
, lawyers, reporters and businesswomen that they’re generally seen as
intelligent, professional, attractive, friendly, and relatively innocent or
untainted by bad attitudes and bad influences. Even positive stereotypes
can be confining, of course, but they’re better than negative ones.
For Asian-American men, in contrast, the positive stereotypes are few: they
’re good at math and good at short-people sports like table tennis and
gymnastics. The negative stereotypes are legion: they’re the geeky,
socially inept guys with coke-can glasses in the engineering labs; they’re
the perpetual adolescents playing video games on their super-computers at
thirty or forty years old; and they’re the physically and sexually immature
, small and timid young men who can’t talk to girls and get their second
jobs before they get their first kiss.
Like most stereotypes, these come from somewhere. Recent generations of
immigrants from Asia have come from the wealthy and the educated, so that
the families who make it to the United States are among the most intelligent
and ambitious that Asia has to offer. Of course they tend to be successful
. If it was only the most athletic Australians who could manage the
immigration experience, then Australian-Americans would tend to be athletic
at a higher percentage than Americans in general. Also, the sons of
immigrants from Asia are pressed by their parents (and by their own sense of
filial duty) into careers that are secure and financially rewarding, like
engineering and medicine. (Daughters are typically allowed to take a little
more risk.) Some Asian-American men grow up in ethnic enclaves where they
’re relatively sheltered because their parents are (with great
justification) suspicious of American cultural influences. And they may
begin romantic relationships later because their culture encourages them to
focus first on their education and professional development. Isn’t that a
good thing?
But stereotypes are stereotypes because they’re intellectually lazy
generalizations that only tell a part of the story. They feed more off our
ignorance and our fears than our knowledge and understanding. The
stereotypes I listed above do not describe the Asian-American men I know, or
only offer a profoundly caricatured description of one part of their
character.
Jeremy, like many Asian-American male athletes, is consistently
underestimated. Great basketball players don’t come from Harvard for a
very simple reason: because great basketball players don’t go to Harvard in
the first place. They’re recruited by Duke or Kansas or UCLA or UNC. A
high school basketball player with Jeremy Lin’s statistics should have been
recruited heavily by the nation’s top programs. But Jeremy Lin was
unrecruited and had to send video tapes and pitch himself. He performed
brilliantly in college, and many college coaches kicked themselves for
overlooking him. Then he was undrafted for the NBA — but performed well in
the Summer League and was picked up by the Warriors. Arguably, there are
reasons he was overlooked other than race. Jeremy isn’t the flashiest
player; never the tallest or strongest guy on the court (he entered high
school 5’3″ and 125 lbs), he has had to add layer after layer of skills
and strategies and basketball intelligence. But still, someone with his
track record, someone with his statistics and all around game, would have
gotten more notice if he weren’t a relatively small, baby-faced Asian-
American in a league that has hardly ever seen an Asian-American succeed.
Jeremy Lin and Yao Ming
Jeremy is not Yao Ming, a 7’6″ freak of nature with tree-trunk legs who
could have an impact even if he was not terribly athletic or aggressive. He
’s 6’3″, broad-shouldered, 200 pounds, and 24 years old — but he looks a
bit boyish next to the towering hirsute beasts of Eastern Europe. But that
’s part of what’s great about him. Jeremy cannot depend on his size. He
has to depend on skill, speed — and fearlessness. Jeremy looks at the guys
on the court, 5 inches or 10 inches taller than him, 50 pounds or 100
pounds heavier, and he can’t wait to take them on. And he often beats them.
Standing in a room full of other Asian-American men, Jeremy looks like a
giant. Standing on an NBA court, he looks like those other Asian-American
men looked next to him. He represents them in the NBA. That’s why Jeremy
Lin is more than a mere basketball player for Asian-American men. Many
Asian-American men love basketball with a passion. Some part of them may
have bought into the stereotype themselves. To be crude about it: could a
guy like me, an Asian-American, hold his own on the court with these mammoth
African-American super-athletes? He takes their doubts and insecurities —
and schools them on the court.
I asked Jeremy whether it felt like a burden to carry the hopes and
expectations of so many Asian-American men upon his shoulders, and he
answered that he couldn’t play for other people. ”I can’t even play for
myself. The right way to play is not for others and not for myself, but for
God. I still don’t fully understand what that means. I’m still learning
to be selfless and submit myself to God and give the game up to Him. My
audience is God.” He does, however, have a responsibility to be a “godly
role model,” and when I asked whether it would please him if his success
shattered negative stereotypes of Asian males, he broke into a big smile.
”I would be pleased,” he said. ”Absolutely, I would be pleased.”
So would I. You go, Jeremy. |
|
