Kerr's apology appropriate

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/24/SPGM24GTBG1.DTL

Sincere, appropriate apology
David Steele Saturday, January 24, 2004

Steve Kerr did not claim ignorance as an excuse for the offensive term for Chinese Americans he used during a nationally televised NBA game Monday. He offered it as a reason, while making a sincere apology for using it. "I didn't know it was a derogatory term," he said of the phrase -- "Chinaman" -- he used to describe the Rockets' Yao Ming. "I'm sorry that I offended a lot of people.''

Smart move, because people of Chinese descent, and of Asian descent, understand ignorance as a reason. They don't accept it as an excuse. They have made that clear since Monday night, when the outraged e-mails and phone calls started crisscrossing the country. Many of them landed at the Organization of Chinese Americans' headquarters in Washington, D.C. Many of them came from the Bay Area, including several addressed to The Chronicle.

The OCA (with 10,000 members in 80 chapters, including the Peninsula and Silicon Valley) listened. So did Kerr, who during his lengthy NBA career had a well-earned reputation as one of the brighter and more perceptive pro athletes. Kerr made a point of not only issuing apologies in writing and in interviews, but of making one directly to Yao, and admitting that with a Chinese American sister-in-law and a brother-in-law who teaches Chinese history at Cambridge, "of all people, I should know better.''
Kerr didn't do the right thing on the air -- and his timing was particularly egregious, coming on Martin Luther King Day and three days before Chinese New Year -- but he has done the right thing since. Now, he has a chance to help himself and everyone else do the right thing by sports fans from all Asian ethnicities.

"He was actually quite cooperative, and we are continuing the dialogue in order to promote cultural awareness with the Asian American community," OCA executive director Christine Chen said from Washington on Friday.

It's a desperately needed dialogue. It's one that the biggest Asian sports star in American is capable of generating. And, to the chagrin of Asian American fans, it's one that probably will include more insults, inadvertent or not.

"Yao Ming is going to be around a long time," Chen said, "and we're afraid that there will be more ignorant comments and derogatory comments made in the future.''

She's afraid for good reason: Her group has been too busy lately addressing such comments. It was only three months ago that golfer Jan Stephenson went on a tirade in a magazine against the Korean players dominating her sport. A month after that, Mets executive Bill Singer (who later was fired) publicly unloaded a volley of racist insults on Dodgers executive Kim Ng.

Kerr's comment came a year after Shaquille O'Neal spewed gibberish disguised as a Yao impression in a TV interview (a clip that was gleefully repeated by radio talk-show hosts all over the country) and three years after then-Kings guard Jason Williams got into an obscene exchange with Asian fans at a Warriors game in Oakland.

Several viewers angrily saw Kerr's remark as a continuation of an ugly trend, one that crosses gender and racial lines (which they find even more inexcusable) and feeds into the same mind-set that, for example, produced last year's Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts - that Asians exist in America solely to be made fun of, stereotyped and caricatured.

They weren't comforted, either, to see such incidents sail under the mainstream media radar the way, for example, remarks by a Rush Limbaugh or John Rocker don't. A few of the aforementioned incidents, including Kerr's, went overlooked even while the ethnic media, message boards, chat rooms and in- boxes were giving them blanket coverage.

Thus, opportunities to reverse the trend can't be allowed to slip away. "Awareness of this point," e-mailer Steve Wong wrote to The Chronicle, "is the key to eliminating (hopefully, or at least reducing) this type of ignorance in the future.''

The Asian population of other major cities isn't as large as the Bay Area's (Kerr purposely spoke to two different Chronicle reporters, aware of the size of the audience he offended).

Nevertheless, its growing presence in all walks of life ought to be sufficient for everyone -- particularly in the high-visibility area of sports -- to start learning about Asians, their history and their culture, and not carelessly fling about the same comments that might have gone unchallenged a generation ago.

"It's an opportunity to actually educate a broader community out there, especially those who watch sports," Chen said. "It's an American thing, and we're part of the American fabric.'' No one knows that better than Kerr does now, and he's grateful for the lesson.

How far the lesson goes from here remains to be seen.

E-mail David Steele at dsteele@sfchronicle.com.