Hi Jeremy.
Hello, how are you.
I'm good.
How are you doing today.
I'm doing great.
I'm in California.
Beautiful weather.
It's amazing.
So can't complain.
No, you can't.
It is beautiful here today.
Jeremy there has been so much going
on with the AAPI community.
And I know it's been important for you to speak out.
Wrote an article for Time magazine.
And you're discussing, experiencing anger, and hope.
What are you feeling now.
I feel like at this point, a lot of the initial emotions
from the Atlanta incident has settled.
But I think right now, I feel I'm more
aware of like the situation.
And what we're up against maybe you know.
For me I've over the last week two weeks,
I've started to understand a lot more about the world in terms
of what everything kind of looks like.
And so for me, it's becoming more aware of how difficult
things are.
How systemic and multigenerational
some of the issues are.
And so I've been trying to have some conversations.
I've been trying to learn a little bit more even like,
one thing I learned was just the fact that like of all
the foundation granting for every $100,
only $0.20 gets put towards AAPI issues.
And so again, that's helped me see the issue.
It's much bigger than I expected.
At the same time, I feel really hopeful too.
Because of just how many conversations.
And how much mobilization I've seen happen.
And so I know that's a long answer, but there's both.
Right understanding what we're up against.
And then the hope of seeing so many people actually mobilizing
and trying to do something.
Yeah well.
And it's good I mean we need more people like you speaking
out.
And reminding people that it's good to listen and learn
a lot more.
Your parents are from Taiwan.
Moved to the United States in the 70s, that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, and what was their experience moving to the states
like.
I mean, it was unique.
It was a pretty tough immigrant experience.
And so you know they were part of this Chinese club.
And there was only 10 members when they reached out
to you Old Dominion.
And that's where they met.
And that's actually the inspiration for this photo.
Here, we got a spray painted.
But Yeah, they met there.
And then it was a really tough life for them
in terms of trying to learn the language.
You know my dad came over here by himself.
Actually, my dad's siblings all kind of
gave up further education.
And immediately like went to work and try to get jobs.
And they were pooling together that money
to be able to send my dad over here to get an education.
But maybe the craziest story is just m
when I graduated from Harvard, I went
to decide to pursue professional basketball.
And my mom at that time knew I wasn't eating till I was full.
Because I was trying to save money for us.
Because the tuition and everything.
And she said, I'm going to give you two years
to chase your basketball dream.
Don't worry about the money.
I got some money.
And she didn't tell me until a few years ago that
money came out of her 401k.
And she didn't tell me at the time,
because she knew that I maybe I wouldn't accept it.
Or she just did what an amazing mother would do.
And so that was just kind of a glimpse into the sacrifice
that it took from my parents, to be able to give me
and my brothers a chance.
That's amazing.
And I can't even imagine what it would
be like to move to another country to have
to try to have a better life.
Not speaking the language.
Not understanding.
Not I mean, that has to be the most courageous thing
I can possibly imagine someone doing just
to better their lives and their family's lives.
Do you remember the first time you experienced racism?
Yeah, and when I was in sixth grade we were
playing in a basketball game.
And we were playing against some people
from Southern California.
And that's when they were kind of like, go back to China.
Or you're and they were saying go back to China.
You're Chinese import.
And other stuff like that.
And that's when for the first time I was like Wow
on the court.
I always felt like on the court, it
didn't matter like color didn't matter, skin didn't matter.
It was just about who could play and who couldn't.
That was kind of the first time where I was
taking a little bit of back.
And just like Oh Wow people do still see me differently even
in the middle of a game of basketball game.
That's heartbreaking.
I'm so sorry that experience that at all.
We have to go but we're out of time.
But I want you to tell everybody about your foundation
before we go.
Yeah the Germany foundation.
I mean one thing that we've been doing
is highlighting a lot of API issues.
And I kind of mentioned that stat earlier.
But we're trying to provide leadership development.
Just empower a lot of youth.
And so you know we got a chance to go to Oakland.
And we visited a couple of our grantees last week.
And you know the one thing that they kept telling
us is we just want to be seen.
We want to be humanized.
We want our stories to be heard.
And that's what I hope that we can all
start doing for each other, especially
if we can go forward.
You know given a lot of social justice discussion.
And a lot of the turmoil that we've seen.
Yeah, well Jeremy Thank you so much for being here with us.
And to learn more about Jeremy's foundation.
And to find out how you can get involved
to help the AAPI community.
Please go to ln ellentube.com.