The 2012 Knicks, Jeremy Lin and Me

It’s winter 2012, and the New York Knicks are in a tailspin. They’d just lost 11 of their last 13 games, their record a lowly eight wins and 22 losses. With the season slipping away, coach Mike D’Antoni, desperate to give his team a boost, gives an unknown bench player his first NBA start. His name: Jeremy Lin.

Lin proceeds to astonish everyone and gives the Knicks a much-needed win in their home at Madison Square Garden. Three wins later, including a 38-point game against the late Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers, and the NBA’s first American-born Asian player — he’s Taiwanese — was in the international spotlight. Linsanity had officially begun.

As a six-foot-three point guard, Lin was more relatable than his Asian NBA predecessors (sorry, Yao Ming). He captivated fans and his name was in every headline. Social media started flooding with #Linsanity and, surprisingly, #ProudToBeTaiwanese. The Asian pride was refreshing to see. All in all, an incredible win for everyone, right?

Not exactly. Because as the Asian community could see itself in Lin, the rest of the world saw him in us, too. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was a seminal moment in my life, setting in motion events that would challenge my own identity and relationship to my Chinese culture.

After a month the hysteria ended, and Jeremy Lin faded from my memory. But now, nine years after Linsanity, increasing anti-Asian racism has made me once again reflect on my own experiences — one fateful night in 2012 in particular.

First, some context. The early 2010s saw a resurgence in snapback hats, and so name-brand throwback caps like Mitchell & Ness, Just Don and TI$A were hot. Like good stock, I invested.

I’m also a fan of basketball player Carmelo Anthony (Melo, to my generation) and have followed him since he entered the NBA. He’d recently been traded to New York, so buying a Knicks snapback at the start of the 2012 season was a no-brainer. Oh, and I’m six-foot-two and Cantonese. This hat would become baggage, both literally and figuratively.

Fast-forward a few months to Linsanity. The Knicks were on their winning streak, so it was the perfect time to rock my hat and represent. That week, I bought tickets to watch Safe House (an underrated Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington film, in my opinion). My friends and I hopped onto the SkyTrain and headed downtown. Somewhere along the line, a group of guys boarded the train, sitting in one corner. After a few minutes, it began.

“Jerrrrremy... Jerrrrremy....” they droned, all the while chuckling to one another.

I knew that it was directed at me. Unimpressed, I gave them an annoyed look.

“Jerrrrremy... Jerrrrremy....”

This time I reply, “I’m a fan of Carmelo, actually.”

They carry on, “Hey Jerrrrremy.”

The train arrives at our stop, so we leave and head for the station exit. It’s their stop too and while on the escalator, one of the guys breaks off from his group, approaches us and apologizes for his friends’ behaviour, as if he wasn’t involved too. My then-girlfriend calls him out on this.

Trying to rise above, I tell him, “It’s all good.” But it isn’t. Regardless, I try to not let this mess up my evening.

A couple of hours later, we emerge from the theatre and begin walking back towards Granville Station. Within five minutes, I hear someone in the distance yell, “Hey Jeremy! Jeremy Lin!” I ignore them and keep walking. We arrive at Robson Street and wait for the light to turn green. A guy standing nearby turns his gaze towards me, takes a look at my hat and says, “Jeremy Lin?”

“Pardon me?” I reply.

“Jeremy Lin,” he repeats.

“I’m a Melo fan, actually.”

He chuckled to himself. “Oh... I guess that’s pretty racist then, isn’t it?” He continued to laugh his comment off as he walked away. I was a little dumbfounded, so we continued walking. Every single person who had directed these comments at me was white.

“You know this is gonna happen to you every time you wear this hat, right?” my girlfriend said.

At this point, I wasn’t angry. The overwhelming feeling was disappointment. I thought we had moved past this by now, especially in Vancouver.

Recounting the past few hours in my head, I tried to make sense of the situation. Why did I have to wear that hat tonight? Did I bring this on myself? I wasn’t trying to look like Jeremy Lin, but even if I was, why is that bad? That’s about as funny as me shouting “Hey Tommmyyyy” to any white guy wearing a Tom Brady jersey. People would rightfully think I was a moron.

I was conflicted with how to feel and eventually arrived at anger. The problem was, it was directed at Jeremy Lin. I thought to myself, “I can’t even wear a hat now because of that guy. F@$k Jeremy Lin.”

I can handle when people act like idiots, but this was more than that. This wasn’t just about Jeremy Lin — it was a symptom of an underlying issue. I couldn’t articulate it then, but what I was actually frustrated with was the model minority myth and how entrenched it still is in our society.

Built on stereotypes, the model minority myth distills all Asians into one thing, one face, one identity. Some traits can be seen as positive, others negative. They’re all damaging. We’re all assumed to be good at math, hardworking and more successful than others.

This places unfair expectations on us. Because we’re seen as successful, any racism we endured is somehow considered invalid — we shouldn’t complain because things weren’t that bad for us.

On the other hand, we’re also seen as submissive and weak. It assumes we are defenceless and easy targets for discrimination. Much of this has roots in the exploitation of early Chinese settlers. They were treated not as people, but as a commodity — a cheap, expendable workforce who endured hard labour, little pay and no rights (read about the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, to learn more). After a few decades of this, society got the idea that this treatment was the norm.

Over time, and left unchecked, the model minority myth can also infiltrate the Asian community’s own attitudes. This can be a powerful, divisive force. I know from experience — it caused a deep fracture in my own identity. Society deemed my culture less important, so I started to believe it too.

I’m an immigrant. My family came from Hong Kong in the late 1980s and after a few years in Vancouver, we settled in Summerland, B.C. This is where I grew up and where my parents still live today. Being a small town, it’s not exactly a hotbed for diversity. I was an ultra-minority there — my graduating class had less than five non-white students and I was the only Chinese male.

As a kid, I got straight As, played piano and rarely voiced my opinion. I had been picked on for being Chinese in the past, so I was always reluctant to draw attention to myself for my ethnicity. I wasn’t being persecuted, but I can’t deny that racism existed. I’ve heard all of the usual slurs at one time or another.

At home, my parents neither encouraged nor discouraged our Chinese-ness. Their main concern was ensuring there was food on the table, so racial identity just wasn’t a priority. With no reinforcement at home and no Asian peers, my culture felt more and more like an impediment and something I had to shed.

In ninth grade, I asked to be taken out of Advanced Math. I quit piano, band class and any extracurricular activities. I took up skateboarding, the most counterculture thing I could think of at the time, and I was quick to dismiss accomplishments by other Asians in the world. I even stopped speaking what little Cantonese I knew. Most egregious of all, I pretended that I didn’t like Chinese food. It would be years before I slowly began reconnecting with my cultural identity.

Looking back, all of that sounds utterly insane. I mean, come on, Chinese food is the best. That just shows you how subversive the model minority myth actually is. I have worked much of my adult life to change my own perceptions.

As a community, I believe how we’ve handled racism has been flawed. There was an idea among many Chinese immigrants that they should strive towards a “peaceful society.” Speaking out about racism and starting conflict would all be counterproductive to this ideal. So we bite our tongues, avoid confrontation, and hope society will change over time.

In a perfect world this might work, but it’s just not our reality. While our relative inaction hasn’t necessarily made things worse, it fails to address the underlying problem, so the situation doesn’t improve either. Clearly, it’s not enough to just put up with racism, we must respond to it. We have to speak out — racists need to know, emphatically, this is not OK.

Like many, I find the increase in racist sentiment troubling. Since last spring, many have blamed Asians and Pacific Islanders for causing the pandemic. Not only is this wildly false but it has directly led to increased hostility — according to the Vancouver Police Department, anti-Asian hate crimes increased sevenfold in 2020. What concerns me most is the rise in physical violence, specifically towards our elders.

Last week, there was a mass shooting across three spas in Atlanta that claimed the lives of eight people, six of them Asian women. It’s an attack that has not been declared a hate crime. Like most, I’m disgusted, frustrated and angry. Months ago, people were proclaiming that we needed to make our voices louder, so we started shouting. We called on our allies for more support, more awareness, more outrage. We asked the authorities for help, but the attacks continued. I often feel like nothing will change.

But I have found some hope amidst all the tragedy. An elderly Chinese woman in San Francisco just put everyone on notice — a man attacked her, and she not only fought back, she sent her attacker to the hospital. Who says our elders have nothing left to teach us? It’s a reminder to everyone that we are not weak or submissive. I don’t necessarily condone violence, but in the face of racism, we must stand up to it; we must push back.

And after a long struggle with my own Asian identity, I’m prepared to push back too.