About 10 years ago, RadioShack ran a series of commercials that featured celebrity pairings of different ethnicities. Howie Long and Teri Hatcher were the Caucasians, Ving Rhames and Vanessa Williams were the African Americans, Alex Rodriguez and Daisy Fuentes were the Latinos.
There was no Asian edition, and for good reason. While Lucy Liu, who was starring in "Ally McBeal" at the time, or skating champ Michelle Kwan would have been no-brainers to cast in the female role, who exactly was available to be the male star? RadioShack could have gone for an overseas action hero like Jackie Chan or Jet Li, but there were no viable Asian-American men in sports or pop culture that the general population would've been able to pick out of a police lineup.
This is why the Jeremy Lin phenomenon has been so spectacular. While it does transcend race -- his story is the perfect storm of underdog elements being played out in the media capital of the world -- it does not exclude race. Lin is a breakthrough because the Asian American male has always lagged behind in cultural visibility and acceptance. There has been progress in other areas, particularly entertainment, but sports has been the final frontier. "If you look at it historically, the dominant group has always favored the female of a minority, seeing them as assets, commodities or possessions," says Ruth Chung, a USC professor who specializes in Asian American cultural identity. "Males are seen as competition, and for Asian American men, their greatest threat to white males was perceived to be their intelligence, so it was always easy to stereotype them as being geeky and socially inept."
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