In the most emotionally significant moment of “American Son,” the new ESPN “30 for 30” documentary that will debut Monday night, the now 52-year-old Michael Chang reads a letter sent to him by tennis legend Arthur Ashe shortly after Chang turned pro at age 15.
Ashe, who was the first (and remains the only) Black man to win the US Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon singles titles, was keenly aware through his life and career that every word he said and move he made on a tennis court would be scrutinized more than his peers.
And with Chang arriving in pro tennis as a completely new and unique entity — a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Taiwan — Ashe felt it was important to give the young prodigy some advice about what he’d face as an “other” in a predominantly white sport.
“You can discreetly use it to your advantage,” Ashe wrote. “Continue your pleasant demeanor. Be polite, smile a little more at times if you can manage it. Do you think that I, being Black, would have survived 10 minutes if I had acted like (John) McEnroe? No way. Michael, you don’t have any choice. If you act like a jerk, the whole Asian-American community suffers because you will soon be the most well known Asian-American in the country.”
Chang, at the time, didn’t quite understand what Ashe meant or why he wrote the letter. Though Chang was obviously aware of his ethnicity and family’s background, he was also a 15-year-old whose life revolved around playing tennis, who just wanted to fit in and whose parents — like many in that generation — were generally more preoccupied with assimilating into American life than building a connection to their heritage.
“I don’t think it’s true as much anymore, but our generation where the parents came post-1965 from Taiwan, Korea, to some extent India, I think there was a much more aggressive form of assimilation,” said Jay Caspian Kang, the author and staff writer at The New Yorker who directed…
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