The incredibly poignant and thoughtful Jeremy Lin-centric writing continues, this time from Jay Caspian Kang. One of the many highlights from this piece:

If you stare at the word “ChiNkBaLLa88” for long enough, you begin to see, a bit more clearly, the reason why Linsanity has sparked such an intensity of emotion among Asian Americans. Within that strange, thoroughly American word contraption, a racial slur is fused — using the somewhat infuriating capitalization habits of teenagers in the mid-aughts — with a highly racialized, identifiably black swagger. I don’t mean to be overly academic and certainly don’t mean to imply that Jeremy Lin thought about any of this when he was 15 years old. But I do think something like “ChiNkBaLLa88” comes from a series of learned reactions. When I was 15, I must have come up with at least 200 different nicknames for myself. Each one involved a racial slur and a hip-hop reference. Within those tight strictures — maybe while listening to Reasonable Doubt — there’s a decent chance I might have come up with ChinkBalla myself.