A blog by sudden NBA star Jeremy Lin as a 15-year-old has grabbed online attention today. There’s several things interesting about it.
According to sports blog Deadspin, Lin’s teenage blog was under the address: chiNkBaLLa88.xanga.com. (You can follow the link, but it’s now been made password protected. You won’t get in.) As is typical, you can use offensive racial terms if they apply to yourself.
On his blog, Lin gave his photo impressions of several NBA players using his hair and a headband. Among these was one where he puts the headband on top of his head like a yarmulke to capture the stylings of Dallas Mavs player Josh Howard.
The blog BuzzFeed then asked the Anti-Defamation League whether they found Lin’s photo and humor offensive. Their reponse? “Not in the least.”
This makes sense on a number of levels. Lin was clearly mocking the style of a wide range of players in a wide range of ways, sometimes at the expense of himself.
What do you think? Can we have online humor about race without it being racist? Does the context matter? And at a deeper level, how long will we be responsible for what we did online when we were 15 years old? (Fortunately, that’s not one I have to worry about.)