ABSTRACT
On February 3, 2012, a previously unknown basketball player for the New York Knicks became an overnight sensation. Jeremy Lin, a Harvard graduate, had been previously waived by two teams and secured a spot on the Knicks after injuries depleted the team's point guard position. Lin was inserted into the game and immediately captured America's attention as he made an unexpected and dramatic impact, scoring 25 points. Three nights later he made his first career start and scored 28 points. His success continued throughout the remainder of the season against some of the NBA's greatest stars and a period known as “Linsanity” was underway. However, public fixation wasn't merely centered on Lin and his immediate success: it was also connected to Lin's Asian American race and ethnicity, which is a rarity in professional U.S. sports (Pandya 2012). In fact, Asians make up only 1 percent of all National Basketball Association (NBA) players (Lapchick 2011). The relationship between sports and race is deep and reflects various dimensions of U.S. society that stretch far beyond athletic participation. As we will show, access to sport, commonly held stereotypes about athletes, and social change in sport are all intertwined with the issues of race and its inseparable connection to gender and social class. Also, patterns that exist in sport (access, images of athletes, and social change) mirror larger patterns in U.S. society in a quite fascinating way.
