The Grapevine

Linsanity’s Yellow Peril

Glenn Nelson's avatarThe Buzz: Glenn Nelson

During the hours before the “chink” references at ESPN, I was convinced that many Asian Americans were willing to overlook Floyd Mayweather, Jason Whitlock, the New York Post’s “Amasian,” and myriad other public indignities in order to experience something so joyous and so spectacularly surprising as Jeremy Lin that even we, the people who are like him, have been conditioned to never have expected it.

Less than a week ago, in trying to explain what Lin means to Asian Americans, I wrote on ESPN.com that his feel-good run in the NBA would be a test of ”an Asian American’s ability to take the bad with the overwhelming good.”

We couldn’t be allowed to have even a fleeting, rapturous moment without the bad-good equation being utterly turned on its head by such a torrent of racially motivated indignation and political-correctness backlash that feels, in some ways, like open season has…

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Stepping Into The Shadow Of Racism

brotherpeacemaker's avatarbrotherpeacemaker

The March 2012 cover of FHM Philippines showed a very Caucasian looking, Filipino actress and model Bela Padilla appearing to emerge from a group of very dark, very African looking black models accompanied with the caption, Stepping Out of the Shadows.  The cover photo was immediately met with a backlash from readers and social media who argued, rightly so, that it was racially insensitive.  The social outrage was so strong that it prompted the local publisher to issue an apology and scrap the edition with a promise to print a new cover featuring Ms. Padilla.  A statement from the publisher said that in their pursuit to come up with edgier covers they will strive to be more sensitive.

An online petition on Change.org calling for the publisher to apologize for the cover saying that people of African descent have been unjustly stigmatized as embodying darkness ever since the era of…

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