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Examples Of Linsanity: The Change In Asian American Identity

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Linsanity: The Change in Asian American Identity
On February 4th, 2012, benchwarmer New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin created an international phenomenon that was known as Linsanity, which reveals the underlying racial tensions of Asian Americans in the National Basketball Association (NBA). While Lin has been acknowledged for his insane ran leading to a winning turnaround during the few weeks of Linsanity, most of it was because of his backstory of being the underdog imprisoned in the racial ideologies restraining Asian Americans. Jeremy Lin is an Asian American born in the United States to Taiwanese immigrant parents who had an infatuation towards basketball leading towards Jeremy’s interest in basketball at a young age. During Lin’s senior year of high school, he received no athletic scholarships to play basketball and eventually became an …show more content…

Getting acquired from three different NBA teams and eventually leading towards getting cut from two and on the verge of the third, Lin came off the bench to produce a record-breaking streak of wins that opened up an opportunity for a playoff berth. Unfortunately, Lin’s ethnicity had more of an impact on viewers than his actual performance on the courts. Due to the fact that African Americans dominate basketball, while Asian Americans represent less than one percent of the NBA and even Division 1 Men’s Basketball. Linsanity represents the journey of Jeremy Lin not just his record-breaking performance, but how he demonstrated a counter hegemony ideology by pursuing a nontraditional Asian career. Therefore, the unbelievable phenomenon of Linsanity presents a unique opportunity to observe the construction of Asian American identity by: revealing the racial hegemony involved within the sport of basketball, which lead towards the transition to a more colorblind society, and how Linsanity is gradually breaking the curse of the Asian American

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