Jeremy Lin speaks out against stereotyping of Asian-Americans

Asian-Americans are largely invisible in Western popular media, which only serves to heighten the impact of stereotypes.

Brooklyn Nets point guard Jeremy Lin, the only Asian-American player currently in the NBA, shared his experiences with stereotyping that has come to affect his career and his life. One particular issue is the emasculation of Asian-American men.

"I feel like Asian-American masculinity is one of the issues that should be talked about way more and I feel like is very behind the 8-ball," Lin said in a recent Q&A session as relayed by Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News.

"So I think that to go to your point of being athletic, like me and John Wall were the fastest people in the draft but he was 'athletic' and I was 'deceptively athletic.' I've been deceptively 'whatever' my whole life … That's definitely an issue and we can just keep playing basketball. Hopefully we'll just keep being good and breaking the stereotypes."

Lin also spoke to the emasculation of Asian-Americans in areas of life outside of athletics. This effect commonly manifests itself in relationships.

"A lot of times we have Asian girls go for non-Asian guys but you don't see a lot of the opposite. You don't see a lot of the opposite, you don't see a lot of non-Asian girls go for Asian guys," Lin said.

"When they said 'Yellow Fever' growing up, it wasn't all these white girls going for Asian guys. It was the Asian girls going for the white guys. So I feel like it is definitely different. Asian-American males are viewed differently."