Alpha Asian

Amidst the Linsanity, Timothy Dalrymple wrote one of the more poignant blog posts on Jeremy Lin and the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations . Now he's written a book titled Jeremy Lin: The Reason for the Linsanity .  If you're suffering from Linsanity withdrawal, then this book may be just what you need to tide you over until Jeremy returns. Like Jeremy, author Timothy Dalrymple is a Christian.  So much of the book has a Christian perspective on Jeremy's rise to stardom.  This was off-putting at times for an agnostic reader such as myself.  Ultimately, however, if you want to truly understand Jeremy Lin and his life, then you've got to understand his devotion to Christ.  The author does a good job of putting the Christian influence in the context of other factors which contributed to Jeremy's success.  Dalrymple cites a confluence of factors which resulted in Linsanity, one of which was Jeremy's Taiwanese upbringing.  The Confucian cultur...

Sorry, I'm a bit late in posting this so it's a little after the fact, but I think there are some relevant points that should be reiterated with MSNBC political commentator Ed Shultz's segment. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy Transcript excerpt: SCHULTZ: Now, I think that if we had seen a black player`s head in the middle of a watermelon, OK? There would have been tremendous outrage. We have an Asian athlete. An Asian athlete is not seen in the NBA too often. But there was a comfort level that it was OK to put his head in the middle of a fortune cookie -- the Knicks good fortune. Someone decided to put that on the air. You know, I`m amazed at it. There`s a lot of things I could have led with tonight to start this show out, but I`m just driven to make sure that this conversation happens in America because I think we teach hatred and we teach racism. Young kids don`t grow up with it. They are taught this. PETERSON: That`s true. SCH...

Maryland high school basketball player Robb Lim with his girlfriend Karen Mendoza and his father Jesse-Thomas (courtesy of the Washington Post) There was a Washington Post article yesterday about how Jeremy Lin is inspiring other Asian Americans and highlighted on one young basketball player from my area. An excerpt: When Jesse-Thomas Lim was a teenager in the Philippines, it never occurred to his parents to watch an athletic event, much less allow their son to participate in one. But on Friday night at Seneca Valley High School’s varsity basketball game against Damascus, Lim, who is of Chinese ethnicity, yelled himself hoarse as his 18-year-old son, Robb, a lanky 6-foot-3 senior, sprinted up the court and shot the ball through the net. While Robb Lim’s swift, catlike moves have for months attracted the attention of recruiters from colleges such as Hood and St. Mary’s, in recent weeks his name and his race have brought him minor celebrity status at school. Friends call him a “...

I didn't want to post much about Jeremy since there has been enough folks blogging about him. But I did want to post a few things to throw some thoughts out there. First of all, it is quite ground breaking what Jeremy is accomplishing. Everybody has his/her own projections onto what Jeremy means, what he represents, etc...to the point where he basically represents a lot of different things to different people with varied experiences. But he also represents some common experiences in which lots of people can identify with as well. In some sense, we're getting into Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" mythology, some archetype that resonates within our consciousness. Second, this is America. In a celebrity obsessed culture, there are plenty who love to see you publicly fail just as much as they love seeing you succeed. So, the backlash against Jeremy starts with snide comments by anonymous internet posters, attempting to diminish his accomplishments. Of course...