Truest statement of the week II

In one interview Lin spoke of watching Michael Jordan on TV as a kid and then running outside to his backyard goal to try to duplicate MJ’s shot. Yet having a black hero isn’t enough to satisfy some. Boxer Floyd Mayweather tweeted: “…Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” Some of the bigotry even perplexes Lin: “People say things like ‘he’s deceptively quick’ or ‘he’s quicker than he looks.’ What does that mean?” Maybe the answer can be found in Knicks’ fan and movie director Spike Lee’s tweets describing Lin as: Jeremy “Kung Fu Hustle” Lin, Jeremy “Crouching Tiger” Lin & Jeremy “Hidden Dragon” Lin. After a stellar performance from Lin, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock took to his Twitter to congratulate Lin. “Jeremy Lin is legit!” he tweeted. Then he followed with a penis joke: “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple of inches of pain tonight.” There was also the Madison Square Garden Network airing a spectator-made poster depicting Lin’s face above a fortune cookie with the slogan “The Knicks Good Fortune.” On the Nick and Artie show which runs weekday nights on Cumulus Media’s San Francisco station KNBR 1050, one host urged listeners to call in with the most racist joke about Lin they could think of. He offered a “joke” about “Lin having to do teammate Carmelo Anthony’s laundry as an example of what he was looking for.”

-- Kevin Alexander Gray, "Ignorance Is No Excuse" (Black Agenda Report).