The Cultural Significance of Jeremy Lin

One man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot?

the IRA were a terrorist organization.

Sein Finn was not. But the IRA was the explicitly military arm of that struggle.

A distant relative comes to the US from Ireland and suddenly your not only half Irish, but more arrogantly, you see fit to pass opinion on what the people of Northern Ireland may or may not wish for themselves. A place where I have half my living and dead family TODAY.. not decades or centuries ago…

You dismiss the wishes of the people..not the politicians but the PEOPLE of Northern Ireland by trying to claim the democratic vote in Northern Ireland is somehow rigged? The simple fact which you know nothing about is the wish of the people of Northern Ireland to remain British. This has ZERO to do with the people of Southern Ireland and in fact there are many Catholics in Northern Ireland that voted and continue to vote to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Yet people like you who have no family that actually live in Northern Ireland, see fit to pass judgement that the peoples that do live there, that they should be forced to become part of a Unified Ireland.

In case you had not noticed…IRELAND has been a sovereign state for quite some time now… however the people of the North have no wish to be governed or ruled by the Irish Parliament. And as long as misguided people like you, feel that they are speaking on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland…then the people of Northern Ireland will never give up their democratic right to choose as to which country they are part of.

Oh and if you want to discuss corruption?? Let’s discuss the exemplary record of the Irish Parliament shall we???

There may come a time when Northern Ireland becomes part of southern Ireland, but it will only be when the people vote by majority to severe their ties with the UK, but even then I suspect they will wish to keep their own sovereignty.

In short… try living in Northern Ireland for more than a passing holiday and try to understand from the people themselves both Catholic and Protestant the hatred felt by both sides toward the IRA and all terrorist groups in the province who are all nothing but bone idle, yobs and criminals that have zero desire to work for a living…..THEN feel free to air your opinions of illegitimacy… until then…spare me the usual ‘Irish American’ propaganda spilt forth about Northern Ireland and the wishes of its people.

My man, very well said. Maybe we should just replace this with my FanPost ;-)

I’d like to second the recommendation for Outliers, as well. This is worthy of a fanpost, by the way.

You’re conflating nationality with ethnicity, and they are different things. That these personal signifiers are also tied up with social class, “race”, and caste doesn’t make it any easier to understand.

In this case, “unifying more together” as say “Americans” means denying a major component of personal identity, subsuming yourself in the great generic mass of the dominant culture that rejects you personally on a daily basis.

It has nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do with personal identity. So you’re quite right, it’s a futile wish – and one that is fairly inappropriate when you read it as “I wish people would identify themselves the way I want them to” when anything less than “I am human” inevitably implies “I am Not X”.

The dominant culture sees no need for hyphenation because it is dominant. But all this is beside the point. Calling it “PC” is a straw man. People don’t primarily call themselves Asian American (or Jewish American, or Anglo-Indian) for overtly political reasons beyond the poliics of their own personal identity.

I would be willing to bet that Lin for example grew thinking of himself simply as “American” same as my “American” adult friends who happen to have Asian grandparents. In fact they have mentioned that they are somewhat insulted and uncomfortable with that term. same with “American” friends with parents who immigrated from Mexico. Sometimes this is pushed on kids who’s parents are proud of their heratige and want the kids to keep it with them which is all good but most kids who are born/raised here and grow up culturally as Americans do not all want to be catorigized in a sub group although many now days embrace that as it is a popular trend….somewhat started by the african-american thing and its probable that their kids reject todays standard pc trend.

I think you get how arbitrary it can get… these things are all socially constructed.
But let’s break it down in simple terms…

Imagine this. You are of some kind of ethnic Asian DESCENT… but think of yourself as being American. You speak English, were born in California, like to eat McDonald’s after a night of drinking, listen to NWA and Metallica, or whatever. You are American. You might want to be called American only, but…

When people look at you they ask “Where are you from?” You say, Oakland… they say “No No No, not where you live, where were you born?” You say, “Kaiser Medical Center in Hayward” They say, “No no no, where is your family from?” You say “oh yeah, my dad’s from SF, my mom from Stockton…” and so on and so on.

Because they look at you and think “Asian” because of what you look like, and to them, looking Asian ≠ American. Although you’ve never been to Asia, China, Japan, S Corea, Vietnam, or wherever, but you get lumped in with all those people, with whom you might or might not know you cultural heritage, depending on how many generations your family’s been here, sometimes even more generations than that German, Celtic, Greek, Italian or whatever descent person that is asking “where you’re from”.

Hence people have to invent these silly terms like Asian American.

although I agree it’s some intellectually stupid and confusing shit,
is the resistance of erasure from society. Maybe not you personally,
but society as a whole.

I absolutely hate this PC nonsense…

This is all the whiteman’s fault, Larry Riley, for signing Jeremy Lin ;-)

I’ll definitely check it out.

BTW, when I said “there was no racial barrier in a league that had just been formed,” I did not mean that the racial tension of that time couldn’t carry over to that league. I just meant that a league that had just been formed probably had a lot of things being nurtured that didn’t allow racial tension to be at the forefront of it.