by Howard J. Ross, founder & chief learning officer
In a period of just a couple of weeks, the world of basketball and then the larger media has been taken over by “Lin-sanity,” a flood of reaction to the play of Jeremy Lin, a New York Knicks basketball player. For those of you who may somehow have missed it, Lin is a Harvard University graduate (2009) who was cut by two other teams. He was a bench sitter for the Knicks until he was given a chance to play and has led the Knicks to eight wins in nine games while scoring and assisting at record levels.
Lin’s rise has led to a rash of positive reaction. Fans have been buying his jersey number and going “Lin-sane” all over the country. But there has been some negative feedback as well. Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr., who claimed to be speaking for friends of his who are NBA players, started a firestorm when he said, “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.”
Of course, Mayweather may have been expressing his point for questionable reasons, but he is more than partially right. The fact that Lin is Asian does draw attention to his performance. But not, perhaps, for the reasons Mayweather is suggesting, as a slight to Black players.
Of course the other questions that might arise is whether Jeremy Lin would have had an opportunity earlier had he more “looked the part” of an NBA player? Or gone to more of a basketball powerhouse school, rather than Harvard.
The human mind is an interesting thing. We see some things and not others. There are hundreds of examples of similar things occurring. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, his race was almost as important as his excellent play. Jim Abbott became famous as a baseball pitcher because he had one arm more than because he was a dominant pitcher. When Timothy McVeigh executed the Oklahoma City bombing was he described as a “White, Christian” terrorist in the same way as the purveyors of 9-11 were “Muslim Terrorists?” How much was the race of the other 19 candidates talked about when President Obama started running for president, or, for that matter, their gender when Hillary Clinton announced?
Where identity is concerned, we tend to notice it most when it is the least dominant. Women, for example, notice gender dynamics more than men do, not necessarily because we don’t care, but because we don't have to. People of color tend to be more aware of racial dynamics. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender folks do the same around sexual orientation or identity. I know that I never feel more Jewish than I do when the Christian holidays are occurring, or when I visit a church or mosque. We see ourselves and are seen by the world differently. When we are members of a non-dominant group we have to have our attention on what is going on in the world in order to navigate it. It is an awareness built on survival. When, on the other hand, we are part of the dominant group and our world is “the” world, it becomes concealed by its obviousness. Like the proverbial water to the fish.
Cognitive scientists suggest that we are exposed to millions of pieces of information at any one time but we can only perceive about 40. The rest are sorted out by various perceptions, interpretations and preferences that we have that leave us with what they refer to as “selective attention.” We see what our minds are programmed to see and miss the rest.
And so there is something for us to learn from the Jeremy Lin phenomenon. How many people are around us who we are reacting more or less strongly to based on their identity? How many do we see or not see without even realizing that our minds are filtering the world around us? And how many talented people are sitting on the sideline waiting for their chance, but not getting it because they don't fit the picture of what a successful person looks like?
Pay attention. There may be a Jeremy Lin in your office waiting to score a big one for you!
