My latest San Francisco Chronicle column: Harvard's Jeremy Lin, whites-only basketball, and the pride and peril of "rooting for the race"

So my latest column's up on SFGate, and it tangles with the light and dark side of cheering for "your people" to succeed. It's been a part of sports ever since the first inter-tribal competition took place between Neanderthals—on some level, it's instinctive to want members of your ethnicity, nationality or other affinity group to beat the living tar out of the other guys. But when does that cross the line? These days, it seems, the answer is: All too often—and too easily, as can be seen in the example of the new "All-American Basketball Alliance," a proposed whites-only basketball league being formed by an Atlanta-based sports promoter, Don "Moose" Lewis. I talk to Lewis, to a group of Asian American superfans, and (too briefly!) to Asian American hoops wunderkind Jeremy Lin, to explore the line between community connection and controversy. 

Bonus extra: The full transcript of the race and sports "virtual roundtable" featuring 11 of the most passionate Asian American sports lovers I know—up at my personal blog, Originalspin!

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