Last week in an ESPN column, Asian-American writer Jay Caspian Kang is quoted as saying, “If you can’t look at Jeremy Lin and see why America is the greatest country in the world, well, then you don’t understand America.” We’ll leave aside for a moment the substance of this comment: the fact that the United States, in the theater of war, has performed genocidal crimes against people who were called the same epithets as Jeremy Lin. We’ll leave aside the fact that people of Asian descent were interned on US soil or the hate crimes they silently suffer in schoolyards and on street corners that persist with little national outrage or discussion. We’ll leave that aside, and just say that in the wake of his own employer’s accidental slips, Kang should perhaps amend his statement to, “If you don’t understand why racism still infects the Lin story and why there is an urgent need to stand up against it, then you really don’t understand America.” More here.