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ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Lindsey Yamasaki: Role Model for AA Girls?
n Asian American women's basketball star? As likely as a pair of African American sisters dominating women's tennis! We all know who the tennis sisters are but only a few have heard of Stanford senior Lindsey Yamasaki. The 6-1 Oregon City native turned in one of the best career records in Stanford's illustrious history -- 9th in career points scored and 3rd in career 3-pointers.
Role model for Asian girls?
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As a point-guard admired for a go-for-broke style and lethal 3-pointers, Yamasaki polished her stats each of her four years, ending with a per-game average of 11.4-points. Her final season ended in a 62-59 white-knuckle loss to Colorado in the West Regional semifinal of the 2002 NCAA Championship. For Yamasaki the sting was intensified by missing the game-tying 3-pointer passed off to her by the jittery designated shooter.
What makes Yamasaki a true rarity is that in her first two years she moonlighted with stellar results on Stanford's top-ranked volleyball team before devoting herself to basketball. She was named to the 2001 U.S. World University Games team and was a standout in the eight-game series that ended in victory over China for the gold.
Lindsey Yamasaki is among a dozen graduating seniors most likely to be drafted into the 5-year-old WNBA. The likely starting salary of $40-50,000 is peanuts compared to paychecks in business, law or medicine, but she could have a big impact on a generation of AA girls in search of role models. For AA girls figure skating has become too stereotypical to be cool, tennis is experiencing an AF drought and golf doesn't exactly quicken adolescent pulses. Yamasaki may well be point-guarding a trend -- following hot on her heels are USC junior Kyoko Miller and UCLA freshman Natalie Nakase, two highly promising (albeit currently injured) guards.
One big reason for basketball's growing popularity with Asian girls may well be the white media's obsession with stereotyping Asian women as submissive and/or sexually-available. To nauseated Asian American girls, basketball's in-your-face aggression, wholesome physicality and association with un-geisha-like height looks like the perfect rejoinder.
Is Lindsey Yamasaki a portent of the coming generation of AA women? Or is she an aberration in an ethnic group obsessed with academic achievement and white-collar success?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2025, 04:38:55 AM)
LA yonsei :
"Since people are asking when will Asian-American guys make a mark in basketball, please note that Rex Walters who is half-Japanese was a first round pick of the New Jersey Nets back in 1993..."
They were asking when will Asian American guys be participation in major sprots as star player. So why did you use a Hapa and an Afroasian as an example to exemplify Asians?
Should we remind you that these examples you gave are NOT Asians, and thus the question of "when will Asian Americans participate in Major Leagague sports" still remains unanswered.
When trying to reinforce asian prominance in sports or any carrer path, it usually helps if your examples actually mention asians instead of hapas. With your method, whites could also use Rex Wlaters as an example of "white" prominance in sports just like you are using him to represent asians. It just as stupid for whites to claim him achievments for their race as it is for asians to claim it for asians.
Why is it that the only time pure asians feel pride in being Asian is through the accomplishments of Hapas or other mixdrace individuals of partial asian ancestry?
An Real Asian who holds pride in other Real Asians.
Sunday, April 21, 2002 at 08:10:07 (PDT)
Lindsey you are doing a great ROLE MODEL for all Hapa girls (not AA) who are confused about their identity.
Keep up the good work. You are a valuable treasure to our Hapa comunity, not to mention how gawdamn sexy you are. You represent the beauty of OUR community.
Hapas all the WAY!!!
Proud to be a Hapa
Sunday, April 21, 2002 at 07:55:41 (PDT)
Her being 6-1 is not that uncommon as most people presume. The common image of petite small japanese woman or the shortjapanese as a race is not really fitting in this generation of japanese. Japanese are anthropologically a tribe of mongols (Northern Asian stock), like the manchus, mongolians, koreans, huns, and central asian mogoloids. These people are genetically a tall breed of people originally. It is the diet of vegetables and fish that led to the smaller stature of our ancestors. As long as we have consume diet rich in protein, we should be a taller race from a genetical point of view. This is different for asians from the south, people originally from Southern part of China, South east asia are genetically a smaller stock. It is not that uncommon to see people that are over 6-4 in northern China, Japane excluding smaller souther islands, Korea, mongolia etc.
joey k
jokeyjno@hotmail.com
Saturday, April 20, 2002 at 11:22:02 (PDT)
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