Linsanity version of protest
The Harvard product added that he hopes the Nets ultimately will decide to do something collectively, rather than him standing — or kneeling — by himself like Kaepernick and a few others have done during the playing of the national anthem. “I will say the one thing that I will make sure is I don’t want to do anything alone. I want something to be united, I want there to be solidarity, because I don’t want it to be X versus Y, or Group A versus Group B versus Group C or whatever,” Lin said. “It has to be, if I do anything, I would want to be behind a stand of unity, because I think that’s what we need. That’s what I think our nation needs right now.” Lin, an Asian-American, also admitted that he believes the “Linsanity” phenomenon and “me being me, my story” has been “a double-edged sword” because of racial implications. “You can just take the racial element alone. You can add on so many other factors, but really anything I do is hypermagnified in a good way or a bad way,” he said. “People are quick to discount me or say certain things because of my race. And when I do well, people are quick to say he’s so amazing, he’s the truth, whatever, because of my race, because of the way I look.
“In some ways, Linsanity wouldn’t have been Linsanity if I was a different skin color, most likely, it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal, and that went to my advantage, too, but if you look prior to that, a lot of the obstacles to even get to that point where I could get to a position of getting on the floor, those were definitely obstacles that were very much stereotypes that I had to fight along the way. So I’ve always understood that there’s good and there’s bad and you have to take them together and just be thankful for it all.”