Amidst media reports about America’s post-racial state, NBA player Jeremy Lin seemingly appeared out of nowhere to bring the struggling New York Knicks a slew of victories. The success of Lin, a Taiwanese-American, has sparked a media sensation, or in other words, a Linsanity. The media coverage and public debate over Lin may be referenced as further evidence of post-racial America, yet it is better understood by looking at the historical context of race relations, constructions of racial stereotypes and systemic racism.

On one hand Jeremy Lin has captured America’s attention because his story affirms the American Dream. As Sports Illustrated writes, Lin succeeded “against all odds” with hard work, determination and perseverance.

The media touted Lin as the quintessential underdog, deserving of this attention even more because of his modesty and morality. There were inevitable comparisons to the NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, as Lin was similarly described as a man of great faith. The characterization of Lin not only fit into the ideology of the American Dream, but also the model minority myth where Asian Americans have been constructed as a successful racial minority group due to their intelligence, work ethic and demeanor. While seemingly positive, the model minority myth simultaneously marginalizes Asian Americans, creates interracial tensions between non-whites, and maintains white privilege (which will discussed more in a later section).

Lin’s Story in Historical Context
While the Lin phenomenon was presented as something new, Lin’s story follows a distinct pattern well documented through historical conditions and contemporary practices. The historical realities, the way history is retold, as well as who and how contemporary stories are told is part of what Gramsci described as the way those in power “establish a certain ‘definition of reality’ which is accepted by those over whom hegemony is exercised.”1 While slavery and legalized segregation has disappeared, these representations and ideologies of the intersections of race and gender are an integral part of contemporary racial oppression or what Joe Feagin terms systemic racism, “the racist framing, racist ideology, stereotyped attitudes, racist emotions, discriminatory habits and actions and extensive racist institutions developed over centuries by whites” which permeates all of society.2

Scholars such as Ronald Takaki and Gina Marchetti have traced the idea of Asians as dangerous to the West’s fear of the “East,” as early as medieval Europe’s fear of Genghis Khan. Immigration practices and laws were intricately tied to these constructions of Asian men and women. Since Asian immigration was largely used as a tool for cheap labor recruitment of Asian males, who were viewed as “temporary individual units of labor rather than as members of family groups,” the immigration of Asian women was restricted.3 These restrictions also served to desexualize Asian men, as they were denied the ability to have families, constructed as asexual and non-masculine, and the Asian American population was minimized.4

While being characterized as asexual and feminine, the legal exclusion of Asians through various immigration acts affected Asian American communities until the eventual abolishment of “national origins” as a basis for quotas with immigration in 1965. Asian men were unable to start families because immigration laws banned the immigration of most Asian women and anti-miscegenation laws prohibited men of color from marrying white women. Accompanying the structural factors preventing Asian men from marrying, cultural narratives characterized Asian men as hypo-masculine and sexually deviant, eunuchs and rapists.

Asians were also constructed as the “Yellow Peril,” posing a threat from military invasion, business monopolization through foreign trade, competition for labor positions, and miscegenation with whites.

Asian men were depicted as de-masculinized and desexualized, such as the character of Charlie Chan or the evil enemy of the white man, like Dr. Fu Manchu who wanted to take over the West, yet was still depicted as feminine, wearing a long dress, long fingernails, and homosexual desires.((See Chin and Chan1972; Espiritu 2000; Hoppenstand 1983; Wang 1988)) Traditionally Asian men have been depicted as the opposite of desirable masculinity. Still today, Asian American men are rarely cast as lead actors in mainstream American films, and even rarer, as romantic leads.

The Lin Connection
Connecting this to Jeremy Lin’s supposedly sudden rise to NBA fame, Lin’s success was far from overnight. In contrast, these very stereotypes of Asian-American men had been in play throughout Lin’s career. Despite a stellar high school basketball career at Palo Alto High School where he was named first-team All-State and Northern California Division II Player of the Year, he received no athletic scholarships or offers to play college basketball. With an impressive grade point average, instead he went to Harvard where he was guaranteed a place on the basketball team. At Harvard, he demonstrated his basketball skills and set Ivy League records in points scored and other areas, yet he went undrafted. Eventually he went to the Golden State Warriors before ending up on the New York Knicks bench. Arguably, Lin was invisible because of these racial stereotypes of Asian-American men as weak and lacking athletic prowess.

Despite the fanfare surrounding Lin, his newfound success has also spurned a slew of racial stereotypes. On Facebook and countless blogs, these type of images are making the rounds.

On Friday February 17, ESPN posted a commentary on the New York Knicks loss, headlining the story with “Chink in the Armor.” ESPN quickly removed it after less than an hour and offered an apology, yet the tenacity of racial stereotypes was clear.

On the blacksportsonline website, the commentary accompanying this ESPN screenshot read,

My messages to those people, stop being so sensitive and enjoy the General Lin ride. Sometimes you have to understand the intent, before you get your panties in a bunch and the intent was to celebrate Lin’s skills, not offend anyone.

This brought to light a point raised earlier about how racism and racial stereotypes pit racial groups against each other. Sports commentators such as former NBA player Steve Smith expressed these same sentiments, arguing that charging racism over the use of the phrase “chink in the armor” was not justified, or at least not the same as someone using a racial slur towards African Americans.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather responded to Jeremy Lin with the following tweet.

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Given the history of systemic racism where Asian American men have been characterized as intellectually superior yet de-masculinized while African American men have been characterized as hyper-masculine yet intellectually inferior, these reactions are not surprising. Whites remain the norm by which others are judged. “Whiteness represents the cultural norm the implicit standard from which blackness deviates,”5 and Latinos, Asians, all non-white Others fall somewhere in between. In particular white privilege and dominance is maintained against the beliefs about men of color as asexual (particularly Asian men), or sexual savages. Saturday Night Live offered an insightful yet controversial response, highlighting the stereotypical and racist responses to Jeremy Lin in the media.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Contemporary representations of racial Others are based on the ideologies that were created to justify historical conditions and reflect contemporary debates over racial identity, racial locations, nationalism, and citizenship. The problem lies not in the images but in the social relations that underlie, inform, and exist outside which contribute to the subjugation and degradation of certain races and ethnicities. As we see from looking at historical and contemporary practices, racial representations have been used to privilege, protect and illustrate the power of whiteness, particularly for white men. The connection between the treatment of racial and ethnic groups in society and their treatment in the media reveals patterns, which we can use as a framework for understanding contemporary racial attitudes. Rather than point to a post-racial America, Jeremy Lin’s rise to NBA super-stardom has highlighted the lingering racial stereotypes and racism. While garnering widespread support, the media and public reaction to Lin has also been plagued by continual racial references and racist comments. Jeremy Lin fascinates the American public because his story embodies the racial narratives that have dominated such as the model minority myth and the American Dream ideology, yet it also stands to challenge racialized and gendered stereotypes.

Image Credits:
1. Goldenrankings.com
2. CBS News
3. Sports Illustrated
4. Wikipedia Commons
5. Black Sports Online
6. You Offend Me You Offend My Family
7. intheweeds2-willyce.blogspot.com
8. Laker Life
9. Jim Romenesko
10. twitter.com/FloydMayweather

1. Page 173 in Chantal Mouffe, “Hegemony and the Integral State in Gramsci: Towards a New Concept of Politics, page 167-187, in (Eds) George Bridges and Rosalind Brunt, Silver Linings: Some Strategies for the Eighties (London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd).
2. Feagin 2006: :xii
3. See Espiritu 2000:9-10
4. See Espiritu 2000; Goellnicht 1992; Lyman 1968
5. Hunt 2005:4

Showing interracial couples on television is not necessarily something new. In 1968, Star Trek aired what is widely regarded as the first black-white interracial kiss on television between William Shatner’s character, Captain Kirk, a white man and a black woman, Lt. Uhura, when the two were forced to kiss against their will by a galactic enemy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, over thirty years later, media reports play up the idea that the numbers of interracial couples, both on-screen and off, are skyrocketing, and push the idea that these unions are so common that interracial relationships barely raise an eyebrow. Yet according to 2010 Census data, only eight percent of all marriages are interracial. While real-life interracial marriage remains low, interracial couples may be cropping up more frequently on television. Do the growing numbers of interracial couples on television signify increased racial acceptance and color-blindness or do these depictions overwhelmingly reproduce long-standing societal notions about the deviant nature of interracial sex and the location of these relationships in the margins of society?

Looking at the contemporary representations on television, interracial relationships are most often found as temporary relationships (lasting just a few episodes), in side-storylines or otherwise marginalized. These relationships are almost exclusively depicted as comical misadventures, introduced as part of a criminal case, used as symbolic of the different worlds that are being portrayed, or play on perceptions of difference, highlighting that racially matched characters are the norm.

Even among newer shows that are heralded for their diverse casts or cutting-edge approach, interracial representations are arguably problematic. There may be a trend to present interracial couples without mentioning race but that does not mean that these representations do not carry familiar racial messages. Still a number of television show producers maintain that they have adopted a colorblind strategy, which they argue transcends race. For example, on New Adventures of Old Christine, Christine is a divorced white woman who becomes interested in a black teacher at her daughter’s private school.

Initially they can not date because of a school policy which forbids dating between teachers and parents. The creator Kara Lizer stated,

It’s shocking to see how segregated comedies are…I don’t see (race) entering their personal relationship. It’s not a factor and there are enough factors for them to deal with. It’s not a fresh area and I would love it to be a non-issue.1

Race is rarely discussed other than in flippant comments about the black teacher like “Who knew diversity could be so gorgeous?” Similarly on the popular new show Parenthood, Jasmine is engaged to Crosby.

Much of the comedy centers on their differences: Jasmine is organized and prepared while Crosby is scattered and non-committal. While racial and cultural issues are never discussed, portraying the couple as complete opposites reinforces the idea of racial differences. The racialized message is still received yet in a color-blind package like contemporary racism and promotes an assimilationist perspective that encourages the view that race does not matter.

Putting characters of different races together is also used for comedic or shock value, where the two are clearly mismatched and the “Otherness” of the minority character is emphasized. On the NBC comedy Modern Family, Gloria, a beautiful Colombian woman is married to Jay, an older white man.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The interracial relationship makes for many laughs, based on the “cultural” differences between Gloria and Jay. Also Gloria’s character is always sexually clad with an exaggerated Spanish accent, and fiery temper, which is reminiscent of the racialized “Hot Latina” image that Hollywood has produced for decades, Rather than challenging racialized stereotypes, these depictions play with racial and ethnic differences, leaving us with virtually the same stereotypical images.

On television, when we do see an interracial relationship, it tends to involve a white man and a woman of color. The representation of a woman of color dating a string of white men, sometimes at the same time and often to the exclusion of men of their own race appears throughout a number of shows. Nip/Tuck, a popular primetime cable network show on FX, featured a multi-episode guest appearance by the African American actress Sanaa Lathan, who played a woman torn between her “rich tycoon husband and the plastic surgeon Christian Troy treating him,” both of whom are white.

The actress, Sanaa Lathan described the relationships, “I have so much respect for [Nip/Tuck
creator] Ryan Murphy, because my character could have been any race. But race never came into it, and I love that.”2 Unfortunately looking at patterns of representation, casting choices are not as race-less as this actress may believe.

What about a show like Grey’s Anatomy, which features many different interracial pairings and even multiracial families, which are particularly rare on television? Like the color-blind approach of shows like Parenthood, issues of race and ethnicity are not discussed on Grey’s Anatomy. The creator/executive producer Shonda Rimes espoused this color-blind approach, stating that they simply “cast(ing) whoever we thought was best for the part.”3

Despite this philosophy, the show doesn’t stray too far from the patterns identified. For example, Dr. Lexie Grey, who is white, is dating Dr. Jackson Avery, who is biracial.

Yet this relationship will be short-lived because Lexie really wants to be with Dr. Mark Sloan, which even Jackson’s mother could see. The other two main interracial relationships involve women of color. Dr. Cristina Yang, an Asian American, first dated Dr. Preston Burke, an African American, where their relationship was depicted similar to Parenthood’s Jasmine and Crosby as complete opposites, though race was never addressed. Now Cristina is married to Dr. Owen Hunt, who is white. The other serial interracial dater, Dr. Callie Torres, a Latina, first married a white intern George in the 2007 season, then had sexual relations with a string of other white men before realizing she was a lesbian and settling down with a white pediatric surgeon Arizona Robbins.

While separated from her partner Arizona, Callie becomes pregnant by Dr. Mark Sloan. Callie, Arizona and Mark decide to raise the baby together, becoming one of the few multiracial families on television raising their biological child. While this may be cutting edge, it still places the idea of interracial unions and multiracial families, outside the margins of mainstream society. In contrast, at the same time, the main characters Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd (both white) are attempting to adopt an African baby girl, who was brought into the hospital for surgery. Intricately wrapped in the representations of interracial unions are the ways that whiteness, blackness, and racial Others are represented. When interracial relationships occur, if it is not shadowed in a world of deviance, the person of color involved is presented as an exceptional person, usually removed from their racial community and the “goodness” of the white person is explicitly confirmed through the relationship.

The question remains, if interracial coupes are portrayed in these problematic ways, then why do television shows feature interracial relationships at all? I argue that by showing interracial relationships yet parodying or fetishizing them at the same time, the shows can maximize their audience without alienating others. Difference sells, yet the presentation must be constantly adjusted to fit the contemporary discourses on race.4 Using interracial sex to push boundaries is widely recognized. Dana Wade, the president of advertising agency, Spike DDB, discussed this idea with television ads, arguing “certain brands might use interracial couples to convey a hip image” adding that “the whole personae of the brand is kind of risky, or on the edge.”5 Ironically these “hip” and “cutting-edge” depictions are actually just barely repackaged stereotypes.

On-screen interracial relationships, particularly between whites and blacks, are either alienating (not even shown), taboo and shown as problematic, or a fantasy, fetish that allows the viewer to dabble in difference, living vicariously through the TV characters, yet still existing as marginal storylines rather than centered. Multiracialism and consuming color as exotic may be tolerated, even purposefully marketed, yet this fits in with the historical pattern where whites have been simultaneously appalled and intrigued, offended and attracted to racial Others sexually, while monitoring, disciplining and indulging. As Stuart Hall argued, “there’s nothing that global postmodernism loves better than a certain kind of difference: a touch of ethnicity, a taste of the exotic…’a bit of the other.’”

The particular patterns of representations reflect the stories we know and the stories we want to continue to see. While journalists like Ann Oldenburg and Carmen Van Kerchove, co-director of New Demographic, a diversity training company argue, “the more people see positive and normal representations, that will lessen the fear and taboo,”6 referring to many of the television relationships discussed here, I argue that these representations are not normalizing interracial relationships or lessening the novelty. Rather than represent a color-blind multiracial utopia, these depictions of interracial couples overwhelmingly reproduce our long-standing notions about the deviant nature of interracial sex, and the location of these relationships in the margins of society. Just because race is not discussed does not mean it does not exist, rather in its deliberate denial it can be ever more present. As Henry Giroux argues about the sexually suggestive interracial Benetton clothing advertisements, these depictions do not increase racial tolerance and awareness, because they are “decontextualiz[ed], dehistoriciz[ed], and recontextualiz[ed]” and reproduce the dominant social relations rather than challenge them.

The fantasy of interracial relationships can not be bogged down with the unpleasantness of racism, inequality, and discrimination, so it erases these structural and institutional realities that shape everyday social interaction. Interracial relationships may be popping up more frequently on television but they do more to reinforce the current racial situation rather than challenge us to move beyond it. Still in contemporary television the fascination with interracial sexuality may be more acceptable than the reality.

Image Credits:
1. Grey’s Anatomy
2. Grey’s Anatomy
3. New Adventures of Old Christine
4. Parenthood
5. Nip/Tuck
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. Grey’s Anatomy
8. United Colors of Benetton
9. United Colors of Benetton

Please feel free to comment.

1. Braxton, Greg. 2007. “The Hot Button of a Casual Embrace” Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2007.
2. ibid.
3. Oldenburg, Ann. 2005. “Love is no longer color-coded on TV,” USA Today December 20, 2005. Washington: Smithsonian.
4. Kellner, Douglas. 1995. Media Culture: Cultural studies, identity, and politics between the modern and postmodern. London: Routledge.
5. Kuriloff, Aaron. 2005. ‘The Racial Undercurrent,” ESPN.com (Accessed February 3, 2005 at http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1983393&type=story.
6. Oldenburg, Ann. 2005. “Love is no longer color-coded on TV,” USA Today December 20, 2005. Washington: Smithsonian.