Nealon's 'The Theory Toolbox'

Throughout today’s modern culture or even societies from the past, numerous groups or communities have played an immense role in creating a world that is more intelligible, responsive, and aware of differing people’s beliefs and values through the categorization of cultural identities. Furthermore, Nealon and Searls Giroux in “The Theory Toolbox” assert the importance of cultural subjects providing a more interconnected and communicative society, but also stressed the false notions of generalizations on an individual basis, whether through identity categories or preconceived judgments. In fact, as a biracial American, this narrative of battling common myths or ideologies dealing with subject positions derived from culture has applied to my experiences in myriad ways whether through sportschool, schoolocial life, or sociallysports and in today’s political environment more than ever. The different instances throughout my lifetime regarding positive and negative connotations coinciding with of my general and personal self has shaped my identity as an Asian-Caucasian American and basketball player that recognizes how cultural labels play an important role in defining what beliefs I uphold or maintain, but not completely containing who I am. or how I perform to these general identity characters. In the cultural context of communication with McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” belief, the establishment of larger cultural identities by society leads to the categorization and subject positions of all people mediated through ads, books, or even magazines. This medium which has translated into perceived stereotypes of my ethnicity has formulated and impacted my external and general identity in the past, as well as today. Growing up in my community, I became associated very early with the Asian-American part of society, not by the sound of my name, or the way I talked, but solely on the way I looked. With this cultural grouping, my identity was subjected to the “nerd or foreigner stereotype” that most Asian-Americans experience on a daily basis (Zhang, 3). This labeling and at times bullying resulted from societal expectations constituting that I did not fit in with the norms and naturally accepted common facts of the culture, whether in the clothes I wore or food I brought to lunchlunch. Throughout my childhood, the world defined and characterized me as “unassimilated or humorless” based on my appearances, speech patterns and general identity (Ho & Jackson, 1555). In fact, the essential message communicated by my peers and through culture was that my general identity became too fundamentally different from the normal way of life. While being categorized as an Asian and all the associations with the term or subjection in my adolescence childhood, the Caucasian part of my ethnicity maintained an impact on my identity as well, especially in my teenage years. …show more content…
However, the trials and tribulations of being an Asian-American athlete root from the many condescending and discouraging messages from peers and the media, even those who watch me play. In fact, the larger cultural society identifies Asian people as a relatively “non athletic group” that remains “shorter than its peers” (Ho & Jackson, 1555). This belief or subjection of aAsian culture as unathletic by the world allows many prejudices and ideologies to occur especially throughout my playing career, whether in terms of actual ability or natural talent. Society, in the an athletic standpoint of the world, declares that I will not be as successful as many people because of my lacking of certain natural traits or athletic ability. More specifically, there remains to this day no greater example of the world’s ideologies and judgments regarding Asian athletes than “Linsanity” in describing Jeremy Lin. The success of Jeremy Lin in the span of a four week period in his career led to the creation of his key slogan, but also evaluatedxamined the many challenges of being an Asian athlete. Even as an accomplished NBA player, the general viewpoints surrounding the world illustrated him as an “anomaly or outlier”, because he stood out from the myth of the Asian athleteic characterizations (Su, 474). In essence, the culture describes meyself as a rare instance because of the relatively few Asian-American collegiate basketball players in communication with other societies to make them more intelligible of athletes, more specifically basketball players. at any level throughout society. The general connotation of an Asian athletic identity remains of being not as talented, or too small, but Jeremy Lin’s story brought to light the stereotypes battled through his and other Asian athletic careers. Overall, many