“Ching Chong Chinaman” Alive and Well for Jeremy Lin

 
As a kid, I grew up with frequent taunts of “Ching Chong Chinaman.” I learned to brush it off, because most of the taunts were from kids. But racist epithets are alive and well in the United States, unfortunately. Jeremy Lin was a star basketball player for Harvard University who is now a rookie for the Golden Gate Warriors in the NBA. In college, he averaged over 24 points a game.  Time magazine ran a story on racial taunts directed at Lin during his college years: Some people still can’t look past his ethnicity. Everywhere he plays, Lin is the target of cruel taunts. “It’s everything you can imagine,” he says. “Racial slurs, racial jokes, all having to do with being Asian.” Even at the Ivy League gyms? “I’ve heard it at most of the Ivies if not all of them,” he says. Lin is reluctant to mention the specific nature of such insults, but according to Harvard teammate Oliver McNally, another Ivy League player called him a C word that rhymes with ink during a game last season. On Dec. 23, during Harvard’s 86-70 loss to Georgetown in Washington, McNally says, one spectator yelled “Sweet-and-sour pork!” from the stands. Read more here….

Lin is not a starter for Golden State. Thursday night I went to see the Warriors take on the Phoenix Suns at the Oakland Coliseum here in Northern California where there’s a sizable Asian American population. When the Suns had the game well in hand, Lin came off the bench; lots of fans cheered. But a couple rows behind me, a couple of knuckleheads screamed “Chow mein…Chow mein!” Adult white guys. C’mon fellas; grow up.

bh