What the average American looks like
A snapshot of America’s rich diversity.
Issue #10
Hi all,
As the United States continues to deal with the fallout from the Capitol attack, images of insurrectionists continue to be shown throughout the world. Of course we know that armed conspiracy theorists are not the average American.
In 2018, The Washington Post dove into Census Bureau data to find who the average American was statistically: a white woman who is 52, with a bachelor’s degree, politically independent but leaning Democrat.
I’m a fan of the the Ad Council’s “Love Has No Labels” campaign not because it can make one feel warm and fuzzy inside — but because its messages ring true. Wrestler-turned-actor John Cena sums up the idea of our American diversity well in this 2016 video, as part of the aptly named campaign: “We Are America.”
Cena walks viewers through an exercise:
Close your eyes and picture the average U.S. citizen — how old are they, what is their hair like.
He cites statistics about 319 million Americans, as of this 2016 video (we’re at more than 330 million now in 2021):
51 percent were female
54 million were Latino
40 senior citizens
27 million disabled
18 million Asian
9 million LGBT
10 million red-headed
3.5 million Muslim
Almost half the country belonged to minority groups overall
So while images of insurrectionists continue to temporarily plaster our front pages and social media feeds, let’s remember the actual patriots who make America, America.
The rest of us.
Thanks for joining the conversation,
Vignesh Ramachandran (@VigneshR)
Co-founder of Red, White and Brown Media
Watercooler Conversations
You probably heard Donald Trump’s Twitter account was suspended following the U.S. Capitol attack. Twitter’s lead of legal, policy and trust/safety is Indian-American lawyer Vijaya Gadde. Her teams have been responsible for monitoring Trump’s account. As Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner wrote in a smart profile last year, Gadde, who was born in India and grew up in east Texas and New Jersey, has quite an important and challenging job: “Twitter’s Top Lawyer Is Final Word on Blocking Tweets—Even Donald Trump’s”
Vogue Magazine features Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on its latest cover — and many people aren’t happy with the photo selection. But it’s an otherwise interesting profile of Harris. A few fun tidbits from the story:
Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were totally on an Aunty and Uncle Walk right before hearing the final word that the Biden-Harris ticket had won.
Science was a common theme in her childhood, regularly going with her sister to their mother’s lab in Berkeley. (Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer researcher.)
I appreciate this quote — especially considering the country’s current divisions: “We can agree that we have more in common than what separates us.”
The piece features a childhood photo with her maternal grandparents…
WhatsApp Forward of the Week
Well, a lot of Brown people are moving away from WhatsApp to other messaging platforms because of the Facebook-owned platform’s privacy updates. But there’s been a lot of misinformation floating about the company’s changes. Here are the facts:
The company says the update does not change privacy of messages with friends and family. It has to do with messaging businesses on WhatsApp.
The New York Times has a good explainer that clears up some of the confusion.
Anyway, here’s a video that went viral in 2020 that gives us some joy during this dark start to 2021. Krithi Srinivas and her mother dancing:
Your Thoughts
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Red, White and Brown first launched on Medium back in 2016 and was re-focused in 2018 with renewed vigor to spark conversations about culture and politics in the United States through the lens of South Asian American race and identity. Please tell your friends and family to subscribe to this newsletter and follow the latest posts on Medium.