Linsanity

For those of you living under a rock for the past 24 or so hours, there's a new athlete sensation gripping the world. Jeremy Lin has taken the NBA by storm, and the impact he has had here in New York pales in comparison to the impact his success has had in the Asian American communities in this country and also across the world. As an Asian American basketball player growing up, I faced enough prejudice of my own as the stereotype is that we're not strong enough, fast enough, quick enough, etc. to hang with everyone else. It didn't matter that I was 6'5" and one of the tallest people in school. My ethnicity made me an anomaly and there were times I questioned internally whether my popularity was based on my skills on the court or the novelty that I was Asian American and actually showed that I belonged.

Even though my real basketball career ended after high school, I always hoped that some day our community would be able to produce a player good enough to succeed on the professional level. I don't want success by an Asian American to be looked on as a surprise solely because of ethnicity, I want success by an Asian American to be looked on merely for the fact that they've succeeded like any other ethnicity. What Jeremy Lin has showed thus far is that he could be the one show that the stigma attached to Asian Americans is one to be broken and forgotten. While I don't expect a sudden flood of Asian American kids breaking into college programs and the NBA, I would like to think that it gives hope to every Asian American boy and girl that this path, one which has been closed to us for so long, might finally be opened and be explored.

I know that enough of our youth has been dissuaded from even looking into this as an option since there are and always have been enough detractors. Hopefully this can all end now.