Issue #38
Hi all —
They told us that bees had escaped outside. We mustn’t get stung.
I was in the fourth grade, just a few miles from Columbine High School, when we were suddenly asked to turn off the lights and sit huddled on the carpet in the middle of the classroom, away from the locked doors. Our teacher read us books in the darkness, just one sole spotlight shining in the middle of our huddled bodies as the district went under lockdown. At Columbine that spring day, two gunmen senselessly murdered 12 students and a teacher. We eventually found out. Any 9-year-old innocence about the world was shattered that day.
Since then, gun violence in schools continues to plague the United States. According to a Washington Post count, “more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine” — including on Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas.
According to a Pew analysis last year, 10% of Asian adults surveyed personally own a gun and another 10% don’t own one but someone else in their household does. Among all American adults surveyed, that number combined is 40%. With the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, some Asian Americans have reportedly been arming themselves with guns. Bloomberg reports that the “U.S. has 120.5 firearms per 100 residents.”
More guns than people.
On another note:
Last week, I interviewed Taiwanese Canadian writer Panthea Lee, who wrote an important article for The Nation about the historical, global context behind the terrible violence against Asian women. (Listen to recording)
This week, I spoke with Seattle entrepreneur Jonathan Sposato who recently launched JoySauce, an entertainment platform featuring Asian American TV series and podcasts. He’s a co-founder of tech news site GeekWire and has sold two companies to Google. (Listen to recording)
This week was also the series finale of NBC’s hit drama “This Is Us,” admittedly my favorite TV show to-date. In February, I interviewed the musician behind the powerful music on the show — Siddhartha Khosla. Check that out, if of interest. Khosla was the composer and songwriter for the six-season show, and he is also the musician behind the music on Hulu’s “Only Murders In The Building.”
Hope you have a safe, restful Memorial Day weekend.
Thanks for joining the conversation,
Vignesh Ramachandran (@VigneshR)
Co-founder of Red, White and Brown Media
Twitter Spaces conversations
Past audio conversations are archived on Twitter for a month.
Dec. 9: The year in Asian American politics 2021 — with Axios’ Shawna Chen and AAPI Victory Alliance’s Varun Nikore
Dec. 13: Misinformation on private messaging apps — with PBS NewsHour’s Saher Khan and Disinfo Defense League’s Jaime Longoria
Dec. 29: The year of South Asian Americans 2021 — with comedian Rajiv Satyal
Jan. 4: Grieving during the pandemic — with The New York Times’ Ryan Mac
Jan. 13: Following up on all that anti-Asian hate — with Stop AAPI Hate’s Manjusha Kulkarni
Jan. 20: Building Muslim representation in pop culture — with /Pillars Fund’s Kashif Shaikh
Jan. 27: Building your own seat at “the table” in Hollywood — with “Definition Please” director Sujata Day
Jan. 28: “Go back to where you came from” and other South Asian American experiences — with author Wajahat Ali
Jan. 31: One year of the Biden administration and South Asian Americans — with IMPACT’s Neil Makhija and Sarah Shah
Feb. 1: Casting Brown people to play Brown people — with writer Taz Ahmed and writer/director Fawzia Mirza
Feb. 3: How to cover Asian Americans with nuance — with Jeong Park/LA Times, Srishti Prabha/India Currents
Feb. 9: Why South Asian Americans face disproportionately higher risks of heart disease — with Dr. Alka Kanaya and Dr. Kevin Shah
Feb. 17: How to break the “bamboo ceiling” in the workplace — with former Sodexo executive Rohini Anand
Feb. 18: Why children’s books are finally getting more representation — with author/actor/producer Sheetal Sheth
Feb. 22: The guy behind NBC’s “This Is Us” music — with musician Siddhartha Khosla (Listen to recording on YouTube)
Feb. 23: Why data disaggregation matters for Asian American & Pacific Islander communities — with UC Riverside’s Karthick Ramakrishnan and University of Maryland’s Janelle Wong
Feb. 28: Telling our own stories — with comic artist/author Laura Gao, “Angry Asian Man” founder Phil Yu, CNN columnist/author Jeff Yang and Wong Fu Productions co-founder/author Philip Wang
March 16: The push for Asian American history education in schools — with Drew University Political Science Associate Professor Sangay Mishra
March 22: “You cannot resist me when my hair is in braids” - Poems and lyric essays on Asian American experiences — with journalist Frances Kai-Hwa Wang
March 29: Sh*t Brown people say - Everyday South Asian American biases
April 6: Comic artist/author Laura Gao (“Messy Roots”) and illustrator Julia Kuo (“Let's Do Everything and Nothing”) discuss their new books and visual storytelling
April 19: How are young AAPI votes being engaged in the political process? With Linh Nguyen of Run AAPI and Axios’ Shawna Chen
May 19: The roots of violence against Asian women — with Taiwanese Canadian writer Panthea Lee for The Nation (Listen to recording for a limited time)
May 24: How to build a media platform for Asian American stories — with JoySauce founder Jonathan Sposato (Listen to recording for a limited time)
June 17 at noon ET/9 a.m. PT: Beyond dad bods - a conversation on Brown masculinity and fatherhood — with Boyish’s Rajat Mittal
June 21 at noon ET/9 a.m. PT: Brown criminal justice — with “Correctional” author and poet Ravi Shankar
How do you tune into Twitter Spaces conversations? It’s free! We try to keep them to about 30 minutes. The experience is better on Twitter’s app for iOS or Android smartphones where you can listen and request to speak in any Space. Think of it like an audio-only Zoom conversation. Red, White and Brown’s Twitter Spaces conversations are all accessible via @VigneshR’s profile on Twitter:
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