Tag Archives: vincent chin

Vincent Chin’s murder 35 years ago galvanized a pan-Asian movement

By | | , , ,
Leave a comment

Vincent Chin rally in Detroit, 1983 (Photo by Victor Yang, China Times)

On the night of June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Vincent Chin was celebrating his bachelor’s party with friends in a Detroit strip club. He got into an altercation with two white men, and both groups were thrown out. The two men tracked down Chin with the help of a third man and brutally beat him with a baseball bat.

Their reason? They blamed the downturn of the Detroit auto industry on Japanese cars, which were at the time overtaking American models in popularity. They thought Chin was Japanese. He was Chinese American.

Vincent Chin was left in a coma and died four days later, on June 23 — a few days before his scheduled wedding. The two men from the club (one of them was the killer while the other held Chin) were charged with second-degree murder but the charge was reduced to manslaughter and neither served any jail time. They were ordered to three years probation and to pay $3,000 in fines.

A young Asian American journalist, Helen Zia reported on the murder, then led the efforts to bring federal civil rights charges against the men. In the end, the accused murderers settled a civil suit out of court. Ronald Ebens, the man who beat Chin, was ordered to pay $1.5 million, but Chin’s estate has never received any payment.

It was national news when it happened, but it’s faded from memory for most people.
Continue reading →

A national town hall to mark the 30th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s death

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

"Vincent Who" is a documentary about the death of Vincent Chin

Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 30 years ago on June 19 in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later.

At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for a Denver newspaper. I didn’t follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a “banana” — yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2009 documentary film about the impact of Chin’s murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, “Vincent who?”

Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind.

In the decades since his death, I’ve become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I’ve also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community.

Chin’s death still resonates three decades later, like the murder of Emmett Till resonates within the African American community as one of the driving forces of the civil rights movement. The 14-year-old Till was murdered in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.
Continue reading →

Watch “Vincent Who?” documentary about Vincent Chin free online through July

By | | ,
3 Comments

Too many people don’t know who Vincent Chin was. He’s the young Chinese American man who was brutally killed in 1982 in a hate crime by out-of-work Detroit autoworkers who blamed the Japanese auto industry for their woes. After getting into a fight with Chin, who was celebrating his upcoming wedding, in a strip club, two men beat him with a baseball bat on June 15. He died four days later of his injuries. His last words before slipping into a coma were, “It’s not fair.”

That sad and terrible attack in a very real sense was the spark that led to the modern Asian American Pacific Islander movement.
Continue reading →

Vincent Chin’s hate crime attack was 27 years ago today

By | |
2 Comments

Vincent Chin was murdered in 1982 by out-of-work auto workers in Detroit. His death marked the emergence of the pan-Asian community as a political force.Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 27 years ago today in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later.

At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for Denver’s alternative newspaper, Westword. I didn’t follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a “banana” — yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2008 documentary film about the impact of Chin’s murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, “Vincent who?”

Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind. I haven’t seen director Tony Lam’s “Vincent Who?” yet, but I definitely feel I’m a part of Chin’s legacy. In the decades since, I’ve become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I’ve also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community. Continue reading →