Chloe Kim and Nathan Chen have become the literal faces of Team USA — and given many AAPIs a sense of pride at seeing someone who looks like them on top of the podium. But even with historic wins, experts say, Asian American athletes still face old tropes.
The three athletes’ different treatment shows how Chinese Americans are consistently subject to heightened scrutiny, forcing them to straddle the widening geopolitical divide on both sides.
Christina Chin, an associate professor of sociology at California State University, Fullerton, and a co-editor of “Asian American Sporting Cultures,” noted that, like many other Olympic athletes of color, Asian American athletes will never be solely defined by the sports they play nor by the countries they represent.
Gu and Yi “have had to navigate a difficult balancing act to represent both their Chinese and American identities to appease their fan base in both countries,” Chin said. “Meanwhile, white American players who compete for China’s hockey teams have not received the same level of criticism or backlash from the public. Gu and Yi’s challenges demonstrate how easily the lines of nationality, race and ethnicity are inextricably intertwined in the Olympics.
“Because Asian Americans are often underrepresented in other major sports leagues, the Olympics offers a brief opportunity where Asian American athletes can challenge people’s assumptions and racialized stereotypes about Asian bodies’ being too fragile, weak or unathletic,” Chin said.
Winter sports have long suffered from a lack of diversity, Chin said, but Asian Americans have been able to carve out spaces for their active participation and even success, especially in figure skating, a sport that was predominantly white until the 1990s.