'Chink in the Armor': Mayweather slams 'Lin-sanity', wants praises for black players
Sunday, 19 February 2012 14:39 | Last Updated on Sunday, 19 February 2012 17:12 | 
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LOS ANGELES - US sports network giant ESPN has apologized for an "offensive" headline that appeared on one of its web pages after Jeremy Lin's New York Knicks suffered a loss after winning seven straight.
ESPN was forced to apologize Saturday for an anti-Asian slur directed at Chinese-American Lin that appeared in a story on its website for mobile users, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The headline "Chink in the Armor" was included in the online story about Lin's role in the 89-85 loss to the New Orleans Hornets.
ESPN called the headline "offensive" in a statement. It said in the statement it was "conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake."
ESPN said that the headline appeared to only mobile browsers for a 35-minute period.
The Knicks have been on a magical run since former part-time player Lin was called upon with two starters missing and answered with the most points of any NBA player in his first five starts since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976.
Like Yao Ming
The same racial stereotypes that dogged Yao Ming early in his National Basketball Association career are now being cast upon Harvard educated, New York Knicks starJeremy Lin.
American sports network ESPN was forced to apologize Saturday for an anti-Asian slur directed at Chinese-American Lin that appeared in a story about the point guard following the Knicks 89-85 loss on Friday night.
The Knicks have been on a magical run since former part-time player Lin was called upon with two starters missing and answered with the most points of any NBA player in his first five starts since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976. Lin's fairy-tale story is further enhanced because he was cut by two clubs, including Yao's former team the Houston Rockets, before the season started.
While the majority of Americans are captivated by the "Lin-sanity" phenomenon, others like US African-American boxer Floyd Mayweather are not.
"Jeremy 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," Mayweather said in a posting on his Twitter microblogging website.
Like Lin, retired eight-time NBA all-star Yao had to face taunts and ethnic slurs when he broke into the league in 2002.
Former Detroit Piston Ben Wallace said the then 21-year-old Yao would receive a rude welcome the first time China's national team played the United States in August 2002 in Oakland, California.
"We are going to beat him up. We are going to beat him up pretty bad," Wallace said. "Welcome to the league, welcome to our country. This is our playground."
Yao also had to deal with ethnic slurs from former Los Angeles Laker Shaquille O'Neal who once mockingly told a television reporter, "Tell Yao Ming, 'ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh'."
Chen Kai, an author and former member of China's national basketball team who competed in the 1978 World Championships for China, told AFP the problem is that some people see this as a racial issue instead of a feel-good story.
Chen said the attitudes towards Lin and Yao show there is still a lot of work to be done to help integrate basketball.
"We have a culture in the US called political correctness. Affirmitive action is giving a minority a chance. At the same time the NBA is beyond that," said Chen, a human rights activist who nows lives in Los Angeles.
"There is a conflict in the US. This rise of Jeremy Lin is just like Tiger Woods in golf or a great young black player in ice hockey.
"It is a phenomenon. It is not a negative story, it's a positive one. Most people in the US embrace Jeremy Lin. They don't see it as a racial issue but just see that he plays good ball."
The 23-year-old Lin said on Wednesday he hopes to change outlooks and stereotypes regarding Asians and Asian-American NBA players.
"I think there are definitely (Asian) stereotypes," he said. There are a lot of them. The more we can do to break those down every day the better we will become.
"Hopefully in the near future we will see a lot more Asians and Asian-Americans playing in the NBA."
Lin's parents emigrated from Taiwan to the USA in the mid-1970s. He is one of the few Asian Americans in NBA history, and the first American player in the league to be of Chinese or Taiwanese descent.
"People in Taiwan and China fight to claim him but inside he is all American," Chen said.
"Some people talk about him being a Chink, but he's all American. He graduated from Harvard, he was born in the US and he eats American food. He doesn't see colour. All he cares about is winning the game. That is the true American spirit." AFP
Whether intentional or not, ESPN’s since-deleted headline about Jeremy Lin was distressing
By Kelly Dwyer | Ball Don't Lie – 19 hours ago
In these early stages, we can't tell you if ESPN copy editors using "chink in the armor" as a way to describe Asian-American Jeremy Lin and his New York Knicks losing their first game in 13 days on Friday night is on par with what Jason Whitlock pulled off a week before. Whitlock obviously, and admittedly, made an awful (and worse, to me, unfunny) joke at Lin's heritage's expense. The copy editors that OK'd this headline:
A since-deleted ESPN.com and ESPN Mobile screenshot, sadly. (Courtesy Gothamist)
… and the on-air copy whose work you'll hear on video after the jump could have just been making a pair of mortifying, awful mistakes. Endless amounts of writers from all fields still use that phrase, and for those of us that only think about Lin's ethnic background about once-in-whenever someone does something stupid, we have to go easy until we find out just who put the mistakes together. Knowing ESPN, though, we'll never know, we'll never find out their real intentions, and this will "go away" quicker than rumors of a potential human relations violation regarding the preparation of the gruel in 1930s Siberia.
[Related: Reality: No Linsanity if he didn't play in New York City]
Here's the video, from ESPNNews on Wednesday. And while we can't excuse this sort of phrase going through, think of the endless times you've heard it used on either 24-hour radio or 24-cable shows like these to describe a mitigating factor. Again, no excuse for someone on the floor not to raise a hackle and ask the anchor to switch his copy, but it could be an innocent, mortifying mistake:
As a writer, I'm not picking my poison in trying to be safe in failing to deliver some third-hand slamming of what happened in Bristol on Friday night. If the editor in question pulled this as a joke, then he or she should be fired in an instant; and this is coming from someone that wasn't at all in favor of Jason Whitlock's firing (though I did get one FOX News joke out of it on Twitter).
Whitlock's was an unfortunate attempt at humor. This play on words was more of a play on an ethnic slur, if it was intended to reference "chink" as "Asian," even if it was a smarmy joke from someone who is too dumb to know better.
It's an ugly word that happens to double as a type of fissure that would serve as an Achilles heel of sorts in a knight's suit of armor. I'm not being overly cautious when I tell you without looking that, honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if I used that phrase in my breakdown of New York's acquisition of J.R. Smith from Friday, or any other post that or any other day. It's a go-to sports cliché. If it was meant as a joke, by someone who doesn't think the word is "that bad," then this is a fireable offense. If this was meant with malice, then this is a fireable offense.
[ Related: Jeremy Lin named part of experimental Rising Stars Challenge ]
If this really was someone using yet another sports cliché that he or she has to fit into about 20 characters or less? Than that's different. A terrible, awful, oversight. A learning experience, no doubt, and a nice reminder that -- holy crap, this Asian-American kid is amazing at pro basketball, and we happily have a whole new set of double-entendres that we have to watch out for as writers.
To have that oversight -- using a phrase that would go unnoticed most other nights regarding just about any other NBA storyline that details a potential weakness to be exploited regarding a sports team -- possibly paired in a post that mentions Jeremy Lin? That would be mortifying.
To serve as a headline directly below a picture of the most noted Asian-American basketball player in NBA history? I can see why you're either up in arms at your angriest, or dubious at your most patient. You're well within your rights to be both. If you want to be angry and assume the worst, believe me, you have more than enough reason to, and my own blessing. There's a very good chance this was deliberate, and that's astonishing in its insensitivity and tactlessness. Especially in describing someone who never wanted to identify himself with anything more than as "Jeremy Lin, NBA point guard."
Until we find out more, which is doubtful considering ESPN's history, I'm going to ease off a bit. Uneasy with the knowledge that it, honestly, could happen to anyone (especially on an understaffed Friday night) with nobody looking over their shoulder, with no malice intended. That's just my take until I'm proven wrong or the creator, personally, apologizes. Even ESPN's quick statement of apology, issued on Saturday morning, feels unsatisfying:
"The headline was removed [35 minutes after it appeared]. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake."
You, sick of this, are more than welcome to demand a swifter, and more transparent and public reaction from ESPN.
Related Knicks content from Yahoo! Sports
Other popular content on the Yahoo! network:
Whether intentional or not, ESPN’s since-deleted headline about Jeremy Lin was distressing
In these early stages, we can't tell you if ESPN copy editors using "chink in the armor" as a way to describe Asian-American Jeremy Lin and his New York Knicks losing their first game in 13 days on Friday night is on par with what Jason Whitlock pulled off a week before. Whitlock obviously, and admittedly, made an awful (and worse, to me, unfunny) joke at Lin's heritage's expense. The copy editors that OK'd this headline:
A since-deleted ESPN.com and ESPN Mobile screenshot, sadly. (Courtesy Gothamist)
… and the on-air copy whose work you'll hear on video after the jump could have just been making a pair of mortifying, awful mistakes. Endless amounts of writers from all fields still use that phrase, and for those of us that only think about Lin's ethnic background about once-in-whenever someone does something stupid, we have to go easy until we find out just who put the mistakes together. Knowing ESPN, though, we'll never know, we'll never find out their real intentions, and this will "go away" quicker than rumors of a potential human relations violation regarding the preparation of the gruel in 1930s Siberia.
[Related: Reality: No Linsanity if he didn't play in New York City]
Here's the video, from ESPNNews on Wednesday. And while we can't excuse this sort of phrase going through, think of the endless times you've heard it used on either 24-hour radio or 24-cable shows like these to describe a mitigating factor. Again, no excuse for someone on the floor not to raise a hackle and ask the anchor to switch his copy, but it could be an innocent, mortifying mistake:
As a writer, I'm not picking my poison in trying to be safe in failing to deliver some third-hand slamming of what happened in Bristol on Friday night. If the editor in question pulled this as a joke, then he or she should be fired in an instant; and this is coming from someone that wasn't at all in favor of Jason Whitlock's firing (though I did get one FOX News joke out of it on Twitter).
Whitlock's was an unfortunate attempt at humor. This play on words was more of a play on an ethnic slur, if it was intended to reference "chink" as "Asian," even if it was a smarmy joke from someone who is too dumb to know better.
It's an ugly word that happens to double as a type of fissure that would serve as an Achilles heel of sorts in a knight's suit of armor. I'm not being overly cautious when I tell you without looking that, honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if I used that phrase in my breakdown of New York's acquisition of J.R. Smith from Friday, or any other post that or any other day. It's a go-to sports cliché. If it was meant as a joke, by someone who doesn't think the word is "that bad," then this is a fireable offense. If this was meant with malice, then this is a fireable offense.
[ Related: Jeremy Lin named part of experimental Rising Stars Challenge ]
If this really was someone using yet another sports cliché that he or she has to fit into about 20 characters or less? Than that's different. A terrible, awful, oversight. A learning experience, no doubt, and a nice reminder that -- holy crap, this Asian-American kid is amazing at pro basketball, and we happily have a whole new set of double-entendres that we have to watch out for as writers.
To have that oversight -- using a phrase that would go unnoticed most other nights regarding just about any other NBA storyline that details a potential weakness to be exploited regarding a sports team -- possibly paired in a post that mentions Jeremy Lin? That would be mortifying.
To serve as a headline directly below a picture of the most noted Asian-American basketball player in NBA history? I can see why you're either up in arms at your angriest, or dubious at your most patient. You're well within your rights to be both. If you want to be angry and assume the worst, believe me, you have more than enough reason to, and my own blessing. There's a very good chance this was deliberate, and that's astonishing in its insensitivity and tactlessness. Especially in describing someone who never wanted to identify himself with anything more than as "Jeremy Lin, NBA point guard."
Until we find out more, which is doubtful considering ESPN's history, I'm going to ease off a bit. Uneasy with the knowledge that it, honestly, could happen to anyone (especially on an understaffed Friday night) with nobody looking over their shoulder, with no malice intended. That's just my take until I'm proven wrong or the creator, personally, apologizes. Even ESPN's quick statement of apology, issued on Saturday morning, feels unsatisfying:
"The headline was removed [35 minutes after it appeared]. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake."
You, sick of this, are more than welcome to demand a swifter, and more transparent and public reaction from ESPN.
Related Knicks content from Yahoo! Sports
Other popular content on the Yahoo! network:
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