Gun Violence Never Went Away, Plus The Overlooked Talent Of Asian Actors

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 26 March 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

It might have seemed like mass shootings were down last year, but 2020 was actually one of the deadliest years for gun violence in decades. Sam talks to Abené Clayton, reporter for The Guardian, about why some shootings get more coverage than others. Plus, Sam talks to Shirley Li, staff writer at The Atlantic, about Minari and the way stereotypes inform how white audiences view the performances of Asian actors. Then, Hannah Giorgis, also of The Atlantic, joins Sam and Shirley to play Who Said That.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, this is Sam's Aunt Betty. This week, the reality of mass shootings in America.
0:08.7	All right, let's start the show.
0:12.4	Hey y'all, you're listening to It's Been A Minute from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders.
0:17.0	So in the last week or so, America has seen two mass shootings, one in Atlanta and another in Boulder,
0:23.8	Colorado. And every time there's a high profile mass shooting, I can usually count on a few things
0:29.9	to always happen. One, politicians will make speeches and statements that don't amount to much.
0:37.0	Two, nothing will really seem to change. And three, the onion will run the same article they've
0:44.1	always run after mass shootings since 2014. The headline is no way to prevent this
0:50.9	says only nation where this recordly happens. That is Jason Roder. He is the guy who originally wrote
1:00.0	that piece. Now, this article from the onion, it is seven years old. It first came out after the
1:06.2	Isla Vista shooting. That wasn't on it. UC Santa Barbara. Ever since then, though, the onion has
1:12.6	retweeted this story 17 times after other mass shootings. They just change it slightly to update
1:19.6	the location and numbers. It's this sad reminder from a satirical news outlet of how this stuff
1:26.3	never really seems to change. I'd read the day when it reaches 100 iterations, you know, like how
1:34.2	long this is going to go on. This past week, the onion retweeted that story twice. It's really like
1:42.1	a chronology of the fact we've made no progress. I mean, if anything, maybe it's just in terms of
1:50.0	taking something away from it. Are you happy with it? If you're not, well, what will you say when
1:58.4	we run it again? I suppose there's an argument to run it every day. But for now, I think they just
2:07.4	focus on, well, you know, it's hard to say like the shootings that get the headlines will
2:14.1	put her those and wire those. And that's the thing. I realized the last time I saw this story,
2:21.7	it was back in February 2020, before the country went into lockdown, before the pandemic really hit
2:28.1	the US. And I, like, perhaps a lot of you thought, oh, maybe mass shootings were down this past year,
	...

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