It seems like it culd be a joke, since at the bottom..the writer is known as the "Daily Ignorant" At any rate the article shows extreme ignorance and poor taste. From The Daily at the University of Washington:Ming has run completely afoul by Rick Chan 12/09/2002 The signs are not good at all when Yao Ming, the 7-foot-5 basketball rookie for the Houston Rockets, becomes a positive spokesman for Asian-American males. I hoped for an intellectual Asian role model who completely negates the martial-arts shenanigans of Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Bruce Lee, but now I have to put up with a new NBA player who is in league with filthy rich lowlifes from the ghetto. Does Ming bite back at the negative American images about Asian men? No, he is the new abominable Shanghai snowman joining the hall of shame of stereotypes that include the enslaved railroad worker, the kung-fu savage, the scowling communist official, the sneaky take-out owner and even the effeminate gay Asian wearing nothing but a see-through black tank top. But Ming represents a certain circumstance of racial representation –– the problem not only lies with him, but also with the NBA and its black-male dominance. The NBA is one of many organizations for which I have the lowest regard. It is one of the typical dreams –– besides being a spoiled-brat gangsta rapper –– that marginalized black boys chase. Very often, they do not see themselves as professors, doctors, politicians, literary authors or even prime ministers. Because underprivileged black boys feel cold toward more-intellectual aspirations, they can only dream of Madison Square Garden as their holy land. The NBA stage depicts the street-ball court from the ghettos of New York or Chicago, the lost paradises of gang activity, drug dealing and gun crime. But the only difference the NBA games have is that the ghetto dreams of black boys become a spectator sport for the general public. Like a raging feminist who wants to burn down the neighborhood strip club, I attest that professional basketball is a similarly degrading carnival. I noticed a game photograph from the ESPN Web site that features Ming trying to hold on to the ball while a swarm of four black players attempt, with all their predator rage, to steal the ball away. This display of savagery was exemplified by the raw exhibition of black and yellow flesh. Muscles bulge intensely from the players’ long limbs, sweat pours down their faces, and their jerseys are so light that they could care less about putting on a Chippendale’s minstrel show. So is Ming a new idol that Asian boys look up to? Absolutely not. For the Chinese-American adolescent who strives to be like Ming, he really dreams of staying out of the civilized world. And let me assure you that the civilized world is engineered by present inequality –– there are civil spaces for the status quo, like the university, the press, and Congress, and then there is the circus staffed by the marginalized. The NBA is as close as it gets these days to putting on a sideshow of six-foot tall freaks ripping each other apart. The new Chinese-American dream of becoming a basketball star bloodily spits in the face of enlightenment and progress. You dare not throw away 16 years of your education in order to shoot hoops. Some are calling Ming the Ichiro of basketball, which I absolutely reject. There is a huge gulf of difference between the two athletes. Ichiro, of the Seattle Mariners, plays the game of the white American suburb. Specifically, baseball is void of all the show of brutality that commences at Seattle’s Key Arena. Baseball is a demonstration of reason and critical thinking: players have to know when to steal third base, how fast to pitch, what pitch is thrown next and when to walk rather than hit. It demands a lot more waiting and calculation; it is American cricket with none of that all-or-nothing pestilence that rages on the basketball court. Essentially, Ichiro is Japanese, and he came from a Westernized Asian nation which called the Chinese the sick men of Asia during World War II. Between Ichiro and Ming is the binary opposition between civilization and the jungle –– a difference, for example, that the Bush administration exploits when forming its China policy. Sport, especially basketball but except baseball, is probably the least erudite of all human activities, and Ming presents more of an ethnic curse than a blessing. It is already too easy to associate black males with showing off physical aggression, and now the doors are open to attach Chinese men with similar animalistic barbarism. Even worse, Chinese men are now both emasculated and physically brutal, analogous to arguing that black males are both immature and super strong. Shame on him and thousands of Asian fans for treating this new phenomenon as a great leap forward. I find it beyond essential to encourage more Asian Americans to join the republic of letters rather than the thug gangs of the NBA. Our Asian boys need to aspire to become teachers, professors, writers, reporters and even politicians because they have a responsibility to interrogate the negative images of Asian men that circulate public space. The Abercrombie & Fitch caricatures of slit-eyed Chinese workers are a call to arms to rip open the stereotypes that exist. Only by entering the temple of wisdom and critique can real progress be made, instead of becoming one in a pack of hungry wolves. --------------------------------------------------
How informative, I didnt know there were any players in the NBA that were only six feet tall. ..For an intellectual who hates sterotypes he sure likes to sterotype others.
He complains that Ming isn't a positive stereo type, but I'm not exactly sure why he feels that way. Because Ming isn't a Doctor, or teacher? His article doesn't really make too much sense. I guess his dislike for the NBA has also prevented him from looking at basketball players as actual people and instead as just 'gangsta thugs'. Maybe this author is a bad role model for Asians.
The author himself is living a lowlevel life. He showed us how negative he can be. BTW, what's his nationality? I hope his country doesn't contain more racists like him.
Judging from his name, he could be Chinese, or maybe Taiwanese. Im going to look up more articles by him and see why he is called teh "Daily Ignorant"
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read....well aside from some of the posts I've read around here!
This guy sounds like some sort of hippie wacko. The only stereotype he is reinforcing is that of the pot-smoking commie.
Please do search for more articles, this could be sarcasm at it's best and I don't want to flame the guy. If these are his real views though, he is pretty fudged up in the head. It has to be sarcasm, how else would he get away with the whole ghetto gangsta stuff and his prejudice analysis of black males? Is it just me, or am i the only person who has black friends at Columbia and Stanford on academic sholarships?
it has to be in jest. i'm sure the the editors read it to approve it. otherwise, he'll be getting alot of emails.
He's not arguing that black people are like that, he's arguing that the game of basketball portrays black people that way. And he's saying that now Chinese people are going to be stereotyped the same way- as NBA-style thugs and gangsters. Either way he's an idiot. When I was in college this kind of crap was always in the newspaper.
This is a perfect example of using a part to cover the whole. We can admit that there is an element of "thug gangs" with some NBA players. But to say that as if it's what the NBA (or basketball in general) is all about is committing the same crime he is complaining: stereotyping. And he is certainly wrong to assume that baseball is "the game of the white American suburb" when many of the Major Leagues stars are from Latin American "ghettos."
there seems to be a lot of fear behind the authors words. Sounds like an 18th century aristocrat who just discovered the island of Tahiti.
I think this guy is being too high on himself for being in a University. Whoopidy f**ken Doo Rick. Your prof would give you a D- on this one. He obviously has no idea what basketball or who Yao Ming is. I want to quote some from this article but I think I have already wasted enough time on this.
I think the author is repressing some latent homosexual tendencies here. Maybe this is the root of his problem.
Is Larry Bird a thug? How about Kareem? How about Bill Walton? What a crappy article.... that guy is angry, maybe he should criticize himself before knocking Yao.
Igornant people can never fail to amaze me. How in the world they would let such an igornant person to write such an ignorant article and that the ignorant editor was ignorant enough to publish this ignorant crap???
I 100% believe this guy comes from taiwan and call him/her taiwanese because of the following reasons: 1 his last name is Chinese name, same as Jackie Chan 2 he knows a lot about Baseball, while only Chinese in Taiwan plays baseball 3 It seems he loves Japanese very much, like a lot of silly taiwanese.
I attend the UW and saw the article yesterday. The guy is trolling and looking for attention. I think the editors are stupid for letting that garbage be published.
