∞ Amy Rebecca Klein: In Which Jeremy Lin Teaches Us How to Dougie
Beginning in the 19th century, the federal government demonstrated anxiety that Asian American immigrants could not become good participants in democratic society and enacted a series of laws also refused to permit Asian American assimilation on economic terms. In 1924, a law forbade Chinese from operating laundries. In 1917, a law forbade Japanese ownership of farmland. It is arguable that this history of exclusion continues to affect the Asian American capacity for assimilation today; while Asian Americans have arguably assimilated into the socioeconomic and educational dimensions of American society, their political participation as a group remains significantly lower than any other racial group in America.
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If Jeremy Lin teaches America one thing it is that cool is inherently political. Cool shatters stereotypes, rather than preserving negative expectations. Cool has the voice of someone you may not have thought to listen to before. Cool is inspiring someone else somewhere to step into the spotlight, someone who didn’t think they could before you did it first.
