Is Ben & Jerry’s Racist?

Ben & Jerry's is no stranger to controversy. Remember Schweddy Balls? Well, their new flavor of ice cream has some calling racism.

Ben & Jerry's has jumped on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon and created a new ice cream flavor called Taste the Lin-Sanity. The flavor featured vanilla frozen yogurt with lychee honey swirls and fortune cookie pieces, which they say was a nod to Lin's Asian heritage, but some didn't see it that way.

Several groups cried racism, and the flavor was eventually pulled and replaced with waffle pieces instead. Ben & Jerry's big wigs said that the fortune cookie pieces got soggy in the mixture anyway, so they were replaced with waffle pieces. The brand's General Manager did acknowledge the comments saying that, "There seemed to be an initial backlash about it, but we weren't looking to offend anybody and the majority of the feedback about it has been positive."

The manager at the Ben & Jerry's store in Boston, Massachusetts issued an apology saying, "On behalf of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Scoop Shops we offer a heartfelt apology if anyone was offended by our handmade Linsanity flavor that we offered at our Harvard Square location. We are proud and honored to have Jeremy Lin hail from one of our fine, local universities and we are huge sports fans. We were swept up in the nationwide Linsanity momentum. Our intention was to create a flavor to honor Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments and his meteoric rise in the NBA, and recognize that he was a local Harvard graduate. We try demonstrate our commitment as a Boston-based, valued-led business & if we failed in this instance we offer our sincere apologies.”

In case you haven't been following the Jeremy Lin story, it truly is one that can be called a Cinderella story. Lin graduated Harvard un-drafted. He played briefly for the Golden State Warriors and was signed off on waivers by the New York Knicks from the Houston Rockets and was living in his friend's apartment sleeping on the couch when he got the call from the Knicks to fill in for Carmelo Anthony. The team then went on a crazy winning streak. You can catch the Knicks vs. the Cleveland Caveliers Wednesday night. Opening tap at 6:30pm Central.