A rookie basketball player has been making headlines recently for more reasons than his exceptional skills.
Jeremy Lin is a point guard for the New York Knicks and is the first American player of Chinese descent. This basketball season, Lin has led the Knicks to victory over top teams such as the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers. This at one time D-leaguer, surprised many in the league and quickly gained a massive following that the media called ‘Lin-sanity’.
With the Knicks incredible winning streak of seven games in a row, many media outlets were focusing on the player who seemed to make it all happen for the Knicks; however, many of the comments made about Lin were not about his playing.
After the Knicks lost to the Hornets, Anthony Federico, an editor for the ESPN website, was fired for using the headline “A Chink in the Armor” to describe Lin’s out of character game, with nine turnovers that caused the loss.
Federico said that headline was not meant to be racist and the idea that the headline was racist never occurred to him. Federico later apologized to Lin and others for the offensive slur.
“This had nothing to do with me being cute or punny,” Federico said.
Surprisingly, Federico was not the first journalist to make this kind of mistake. Jason Whitlock, a writer for Foxsports.com, tweeted “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight” after Lin put up an impressive 38 points against the Lakers, leading the Knicks to a victory. Whitlock was suspended from Foxsports.com for his comments.
Judy Robinson, former minority affairs reporter for the Oklahoman and advisor of the Oklahoma Daily, says that the reasons behind these off color remarks could be because of the novelty of having a skilled Asian-American in the NBA.
“Perhaps it’s just the novelty factor, but that undermines the whole idea that if you have some diversity training you understand that you have to be sensitive to all people and all types,” Robinson said.
Robinson said the way for journalist and all media writers to avoid these kind of offensive remarks is through diversity training. She says that through this training, media writers will learn they cannot just be sensitive to people but understand what the stereotypes are and where they came from.
“ You’ve got to explore where your own dark spots are and the things that you don’t, maybe don’t realize,” Robinson said.
In the case of Jeremy Lin, he says that he forgives the people who have made racist comments about him; however, this does not erase the things that were said about him. With how fast media stories develop today, journalists have a shorter amount of time to stop and think about what they write or say. Because of this fact, when averse comments are made, media outlets will have to take swifter and firmer action against the offenders. Robinson says that even though some of the comments made may have been mistakes, there is no reason to ignore the seriousness of the comments.
“ We avoid stereotypes. We don’t encourage them.”
Judy Robinson
(405) 325-2842
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