Were you on ESPN’s mobile site between 2:30 and 3:05 a.m. Saturday morning? No? Didn’t think so. Since you weren’t, allow me to enlighten you on what you missed.
Friday night, the New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin—who has been the topic of much discussion recently because of his talent, contagious demeanor on the court and Chinese- and Taiwanese-American birth—had his first bad game as a starter. Lin’s nine turnovers cost the Knicks the game to the struggling Hornets, putting an end to the Knicks’ seven-game winning streak with an 89-85 loss.
The headline that ESPN went with for its story package was “Chink in the Armor.” Yes, you read that correctly. For just over a half an hour, the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports” had that headline front and center.
Two more instances involved an offensive comment. One of them was said on ESPN Radio New York and the other was on ESPNNEWS.
The only noun in the entire English lexicon of words describing a problem with armor that couldn’t be used to describe something related to Lin is “chink.” But that’s what this person chose.
ESPN did respond by firing the employee responsible for the headline, suspending the ESPNNEWS anchor for 30 days and reiterating that the radio commentator was not employed by ESPN. The company also issued a statement of apology.
“We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin,” the statement read. “His accomplishments are a source of great pride to the Asian-American community, including the Asian-American employees at ESPN. Through self-examination, improved editorial practices and controls, and response to constructive criticism, we will be better in the future.”
I have never personally felt the effect of words like that. I’m the poster child for sheltered white boys. I haven’t the slightest idea how it feels to be looked down on because of race. So I asked my Chinese-born girlfriend about the harm that slurs could cause.
“When I first moved to Connecticut, I went to a pretty low-level school system and I was called that a few times,” she told me. “It definitely hurt, but the sad thing is that I wouldn’t expect them to know any better. I’m just shocked that somebody who works for a national media organization like ESPN wouldn’t know better than to say something that insensitive.”
I am fully in favor of giving people the benefit of the doubt and being graceful when people mess things up in the world of media, but something like this warrants a hefty amount of criticism. One racially insensitive comment is bad, but two is extremely concerning and three is an alarming trend. If there are three comments made by a media beast like ESPN that warrant apology within a 24-hour span, that’s something to be addressed at a deeper level.
I hear a lot of people say that building a culture of understanding people’s feelings will put an end to mean and racial comments, but I disagree. These guys at ESPN knew perfectly well what they were expressing and the terrible meaning of their words, yet chose to say or write them anyway. Something else needs to be done.
As a society, we like to pat ourselves on the back and pretend that we are doing well as far as racism goes. But are we? The Jeremy Lin/ESPN incident proves that we still have further to go than we think.
I would contend that we haven’t so much addressed racism, as we have done a better job of shutting people up. People still have racist tendencies, but acting on them has become frowned upon and carries severe consequences for one’s reputation, so people simply prevent them from reaching a public forum.
How do I know this? Well, I’m writing this column, so something isn’t working. We might look clean, but the problem still very much exists.
So then, how do we eradicate racism? Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? We had better start talking.